


Echoes

by chiiyo86



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Interracial Siblings, Kidnapping, Mystery, Racism, Sibling Bonding, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:15:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 79,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26666533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: On the night of November 15, 1963, Allison finds Five passed out in the back alley where she landed two years ago. Together they set out to try and find their siblings, but the task turns out to be more complicated than they imagined...
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Allison Hargreeves, Raymond Chestnut/Allison Hargreeves
Comments: 613
Kudos: 1026





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Five and Allison are the siblings who have interracted the least over the two seasons, which is a shame because I love both of them and they would be fabulous together. Until we get a third season that hopefully remedies to this, have this fic!

“Again? What’s it now, the twelfth time?”

“Thirteenth. Lucky number. Maybe this time will be the charm!” A pause. “Sorry, that wasn’t very funny. Sorry.”

“We have to do something. Maybe if we help him, he’ll help us in return. I don’t know how much longer I can bear this and I know I’m not the only one.” 

“Help him how? What can we do? We’re under constant watch.”

“We’ll have to be careful, but I have an idea. She’ll be focused on him; she always is. So what if we—"

—-

Allison couldn’t remember the last time she’d come here, but she knew it had been a while. Though it was only a ten-minute walk from the beauty parlor, coming here meant crossing that invisible line that turned her into an unwelcome visitor from the ‘wrong part of town.’ She walked with her head up and her shoulders pulled straight, acting as though she belonged here, defaulting to brazenness and arrogance as she’d always done when she felt unsure, but it was hard to ignore the unfriendly looks she was drawing. She walked past Stadtler’s and crossed the street before she reached the Avon theater, avoiding a black Dodge that honked at her. Before she could glimpse into the alley, she ground to a halt.

She wasn’t sure why she’d come today. It never did her any good to check the alley, because she’d never found anyone there but drunkards taking a piss. Never any of her siblings, plopping out of the sky like she’d done. She always ended up disappointed and wishing she hadn’t poured salt on her wound, even though it was a wound that she could never let heal. What she’d been doing for the past two years couldn’t be called mourning, because how could you mourn something that you weren’t sure you’d lost? She didn’t know whether her brothers and sister were dead, or would make it back to her one day, or were scattered to totally different time periods and places she could never hope to reach. And Claire, her baby girl who’d been wiped out with the rest of the world, was only _hypothetically_ dead. It hadn’t happened yet, after all, and what hadn’t happened could still be changed. If she found the others, if Five came back, if they could all return to 2019, then maybe she’d be able to hold her daughter in her arms again one day.

But hope was a double-edged sword and Allison was tired of cutting herself on it. A month and half ago had been their birthday, hers and her siblings’, and the thought of them had nagged her since then. This was probably why she was here today, foolish as that was. She should go back home before someone took offense to her presence in an all-white neighborhood. In a few days, she and Ray would celebrate their first wedding anniversary, and she should focus on positive things, not subject herself to the prick of disappointment. She’d almost talked herself into turning her heels and walking back, when a flash of blue light and a thumping sound, like a body hitting asphalt, stopped her in her tracks.

_No way. It can’t be._

She must have imagined it. She’d wished for it so hard that her mind had conjured that blue flash. She looked around, trying to see if other people were reacting to it, but all the passersby were engrossed in their own worlds, only paying her any mind to glance disapprovingly at her face—but then no one had seemed to realize that she’d dropped from the sky when she’d arrived two years ago. People were oblivious to what didn’t affect them directly. Her heart pounding, Allison trotted up to the mouth of the back alley and peeked into it.

The alley looked the same as always, tufts of grass edging the buildings, clusters of overflowing trashcans lining them, the brick back wall of Marty’s closing the end of it—except that someone was crumpled in a heap in the middle of the alley, face down in a dirty puddle of rainwater. Allison’s breath caught and she hurried to the form, dropping down to her knees without a care for her yellow dress or her stockings.

She knew it was Five even before she rolled him over and could see his face. She’d recognized the Umbrella Academy uniform, the jacket, the shorts, the black shoes, the stupid knee socks. With trembling hands, she checked his pulse. His skin was cold to the touch but she sagged in relief when she felt the tremor of a heartbeat under her fingertips. It was a little slow, but strong enough to be a comfort. She hoisted him up so that his head was cushioned on her lap, brushed the hair off his clammy forehead.

“Five?” she called. “Five, can you hear me?”

He didn’t even stir. She examined his limbs, looking for an obvious wound or a tear in his clothing. His knees and hands were scratched, but if he’d been spat out from the sky the way she’d been, the scratches might have just been caused by the fall, and she could find nothing that would explain his unconsciousness, no trace of a bump on his head. Maybe he’d just overused his powers, but she’d only seen him work himself into exhaustion so severe he’d passed out once in her life, back when they were very little and still figuring out their abilities. What had happened that would drain him like that?

“Five, wake up,” she tried again, giving his shoulder a little shake. He still wouldn’t wake up, and she sighed. “What am I supposed to do with you?” she murmured.

Though he was smaller than her, she knew from the experience of carrying him with Diego two years ago that he was too heavy for her to maneuver him gracefully, at least not without drawing a lot of unwanted attention to herself. Should she call an ambulance? She couldn’t be sure that whatever was wrong with him was related to his powers, and if it wasn’t, then he might need a doctor. But the thought of leaving him in a hospital made her stomach twist uneasily. If she took him there, no one would believe that she was family. They wouldn’t let her visit him, maybe wouldn’t even let her know how he was doing—not unless she used her power, and she’d sworn she wouldn’t do that anymore. The hospital might even get the police involved once they realized that they couldn’t find his parents. When he woke up, would he know where and _when_ he was? If Five was disoriented and alone when he came back to consciousness, the police would definitely get involved. 

“It would really help if you could wake up right now,” she said. All he did was breathe quietly through his half-open mouth, his face slack and pale. “But you’ve never done anything the easy way, have you? Right.”

It left her with only one option, which was to call Ray and ask him to bring the car here. Ray wouldn’t like it; he would have a lot of questions that she wasn’t sure how to answer. Of all the ways she could have introduced Ray to the madness that was her family, Five was probably the worst option. What other choice did she have, though?

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Five. “I’m going to leave you here for a few minutes, but I’ll be back, all right?” 

It felt wrong to just lie him back down on the damp ground, so she dragged him and propped him up against a wall. After a pause for thought, she moved him again so he would be hidden behind a trash can—it would suck if someone were to find him while Allison was making her call and take him away. 

“Don’t move,” she said uselessly. She walked up to the entrance of the alley, glanced back in case he’d suddenly awoken to the world of the living, then walked out into the main street. 

She knew there was a phone booth a little further down the street and she hurried her steps as much as she could without looking suspicious. The longer she stayed here, the more chances there were that someone would decide to pick a fight. While she could defend herself, doing so would mean risk getting arrested and leaving Five unconscious in that alley, hidden behind a trashcan, for an undetermined amount of time. Fortunately, no one was using the phone booth when Allison got to it, and she rushed inside before anyone could object to her using it. Inserting a coin into the slot, she dialed the number to Ray’s office, muttering prayers to herself that he hadn’t left already, as their house was a lot farther.

“Hi, Terri,” she said into the phone when she got an answer from the receptionist, making herself sound as upbeat as she could. “It’s Allison. I’m sorry to bother you, but is Ray here? Can I talk to him? It’s real urgent, so if you— _thank you_.”

After another moment of nerve-wracking wait, Ray’s voice was in her ear, “Allison, are you all right? Did something happen?”

“I’m fine, don’t worry,” she said. “But something _did_ happen. I need a weird favor: could you come and get me with the car on Commerce, across the street from the Avon theater? I’m in the alley at the back of Marty’s.”

“Are you sure you’re fine?” he insisted. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” she said, impatient. “But there is—” How much should she tell him? She didn’t want to get into long explanations over the phone, but she had to give him _some_ warning about what he would find when he came to pick her up. “There is someone with me. Someone who needs help.”

“Who? Is it—”

“It isn’t any of our friends,” she cut him off. “It’s no one you know. Please, Ray. I wouldn’t ask you to do this if it weren’t important.”

The pleading worked. When he spoke again, his voice was soft and compliant, “All right. I’ll be right there. Sit tight.”

“Thank you,” Allison said fervently.

After hanging up, she quickly left the phone booth, feeling like a thief anticipating being caught into a police car’s headlights. In the alley, Five hadn’t moved, which was both a relief and a concern. She sat behind the trashcan and settled him back in her lap. He felt too cold, and she frequently checked his pulse to make sure he hadn’t died on her. She talked out loud, even though he couldn’t answer and probably couldn’t hear her, to alleviate the nagging worries that kept needling her. How serious was Five’s condition? What would Ray say when he saw him? What would _she_ say?

“I would say you took your time getting here,” she said, “but since this time it’s been less than a decade, I guess I should call it progress. Although I don’t know how long it’s been for you. You look the same, but that doesn’t mean much. Where the hell have you been, Five? Where are the others?”

He breathed steadily; she tightened her grip on his shoulders. The noises from the traffic on the main street sounded remote, barely breaching their bubble of silence. Her ass and back were getting cold and wet, the slick bricks digging into her shoulder blades. She tried to avoid breathing through her nose, as the sickly-sweet stench of garbage turned her stomach.

“I hope you have a way to get us back. I haven’t seen my daughter in two years. When we go back, will she even know I was gone at all? I hope she doesn’t—I don’t want her to think I’ve abandoned her.” 

Allison stopped talking, the reality of her own words hitting her. Although she knew better than to ever expect things to go well for them, maybe when he woke up Five _would_ know of a way to go back, would know where to find the others. In a week, a few days, maybe less, she could be seeing Claire again. Allison’s chest felt too tight, both from painful hope and from the thought of Ray. It wasn’t really a choice, because if there was a way for her to reunite with her daughter of course she had to take it, but she wasn’t ready to just leave him like this. She’d had no time to prepare.

“Allison? Where are you?”

It was Ray’s voice. Allison hurriedly wiped her eyes, cleared her throat and called, “Right here!”

She leaned forward so he could see her from behind the trashcan, jostling a too pliant Five in the process. Even though she’d kept telling him she was fine on the phone, there was a panicked look on Ray’s face that only smoothed over when he caught sight of her. He smiled, relieved, then frowned when a second look let him see Five in Allison’s lap.

“Who’s this?”

“The person I told you about.”

“Yeah, I get that,” he said, his eyes fixed on Five’s still form. “But, what do you want me to… Where are we taking that boy, where are his parents?”

“Don’t worry about his parents. And we’re bringing him home.”

“What?” He looked up from Five, his startled eyes meeting hers. “Bring him home. With us, you mean. Allison, who _is_ that kid?”

“I’ll explain everything once we’re home. Give me your jacket, I’ll cover him with it. Are you parked far from here? The less opportunities we give people to have a look at him, the less chances there are that someone will think we’re kidnapping him.”

“And are we kidnapping him?” Ray asked, although he was already unbuttoning his jacket and shrugging out of it.

“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. If he were awake, he would come with us willingly.” 

Well, unless he had something more important to do, like saving the world, escaping time-traveling assassins, or whatever Five was up to when he fucked off to god knew where, but at least he wouldn’t be _afraid_ of Allison or Ray. Five had never been afraid of anyone, even as a kid. Allison took the jacket Ray was holding out to her and laid it out on Five, at first leaving his face uncovered, then hesitating a little before dragging up the jacket to hide it. She ignored the pang in her chest and the fleeting thought that it felt like covering a corpse’s face with a shroud. 

“You owe me one, Five,” she murmured into his ear. 

—-

There had always been a whiff of mystery following Allison around. Ray could admit to himself that it was part of what had attracted him to her, though it had taken him a while to figure out exactly what caused that mysterious aura. She’d appeared one day out of nowhere, wounded and mute, but the fact that she didn’t want to talk about who had slit her throat, damaging her vocal chords, wasn’t surprising to Ray. He wouldn’t bring up such a traumatizing topic unless she did it first, though he had some ideas about what might have happened. She didn’t talk about her family or her life before Dallas, but this wasn’t out of the ordinary either. People had pasts, often painful ones, and when Allison wanted to open up to him about hers, Ray would be there to listen, but not a moment before. 

None of this was what made Allison so inscrutable sometimes. No, what intrigued Ray was the small things that seemed to take her aback, like the fact that most people didn’t have a phone in their homes, who the governor of Texas was, or how much people were smoking. It was how she held herself, how she talked, as though she was used to commanding attention and was startled to have to fight for it. Having to bite her tongue, to demure in situations where it wasn’t worth the hassle to fight back, appeared to be absolutely contrary to her nature. She had luxurious tastes, though she tried to curb them, which made Ray wonder if her family had been wealthy or if she’d been married to a rich man before him. And she could throw a punch, like no woman Ray had ever seen—when they’d been assaulted by a couple of drunk white boys on one of their date nights, it had been her who’d made them run away, furious and humiliated, nursing sore faces and bruised egos.

She was a puzzle whose pieces he couldn’t all see, but it was part of her charm and Ray had married her ready to accept it. Nothing had prepared him to Allison bringing home a wounded white boy, the way other people brought wounded birds, giving Ray no explanation as to how she’d found him and why she wouldn’t take him to a hospital. Ray wasn’t the sort of man who’d abandon a hurt child in need of help, but the situation made him nervous. The boy wore a rumpled school uniform, like from one of those rich white prep schools, meaning that he must have parents, wealthy parents who wouldn’t take kindly to their son being taken away by a black couple, even if it was with the best of intentions. But Allison wouldn’t heed any of his objections and Ray was now just resignedly watching her take care of the boy, waiting until she was ready to explain what was going on.

She’d laid the boy on their couch, taken off his shoes, washed his face and cleaned the cuts on his legs and hands. She moved briskly, business-like, her mouth pinched and her face tight in annoyance, sometimes muttering what sounded like unflattering comments aimed at the boy, as though she was as put off by the situation as Ray was starting to be. 

“You’ll wake up before I have to give you a sponge bath, I hope,” he heard her mumble under her breath. She pinched the boy’s side and added, “You owe me _so much_ for this.”

She took off his jacket, moved his arms and legs, probably checking for breaks. She pulled off his V-neck checkered sweater and opened his white button up shirt, palpating his abdomen. Her gestures were sure and practiced, like she was used to conducting that sort of examination. Throughout all this, the boy didn’t move, didn’t even make a sound. Allison’s frown was deepening. As she carefully rotated his left hand, the kid’s shirt sleeve inched down and Ray saw black curving lines on the inside of his wrist, looking awfully like the umbrella tattoo that Allison had in the exact same place. Now that was odd; a new piece of the puzzle that didn’t seem to fit anywhere. Done with her ministrations, Allison laid a throwaway blanket over the boy then smoothed it fussily for a moment, looking deeply unhappy. She was _worried_ , Ray realized, despite all the grumbling. Not just the generic amount of concern one could feel when faced with an injured kid, but something more personal. That boy meant something to her. 

“Will you tell me what’s going on, now?” Ray asked after she’d spent another moment watching the sleeping boy without doing anything. “Who is he? Why couldn’t we get him to a hospital?”

“They wouldn’t have let me see him,” Allison said absently. “Once he was there, they wouldn’t have given me any news of him.”

“And why is this so important? How do you know him?”

Allison sighed, glanced at the boy again, then got up and dragged Ray by the hand to the dinner area, as though she worried their voices would disturb the kid. 

“Thank you for letting him stay here,” Allison said as she sat at the table, and Ray’s irritation melted at the genuine gratitude in her voice. “I know how this must look—”

“I actually can’t decide how it looks,” Ray said. “I can’t make sense of it. Won’t his parents worry about him? What if they find him here?”

“His parents won’t be looking for him.”

“Then his guardians, if he’s lost his parents. He must be from a wealthy family, wearing that kind of uniform. Wealthy white folks who won’t be happy to find him in our home.”

Allison let out a snort, her lips quirking as though he’d said something funny. “You don’t have to worry about his family, really. His family is right here.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s my brother.”

“Your brother,” Ray repeated incredulously. 

He gave the boy another look, in case the color of his skin had changed while he wasn’t looking. Allison might have had a white parent, but the boy didn’t look like he had a black parent and there was no resemblance between he and Allison—genetics was a strange roll of the dice, sometimes, but it still was hard to believe.

“We were adopted,” Allison said, rolling her eyes. “And see, that face you made right now was why I couldn’t bring him to a hospital. If even _you_ don’t believe me—”

“I never said that I didn’t believe you.”

“But you doubted it for a second, didn’t you? You looked at us and thought we didn’t look like family.”

“All right,” he said, raising his hands in defeat. “I admit it, this is throwing me for a loop. But if you tell me that he’s your brother, then I believe you. And if he’s family then of course I want to help him. What’s his name?”

“Five.”

It was such a non-sequitur that all Ray could do was blink. “I’m sorry, five what?”

“‘Five’ is his name.”

“O—kay. I guess I’ve heard worse nicknames.”

“It’s not a nickname. It’s his name.” Allison twisted around on her chair, looking back to where her brother lay. “Contrarian asshole,” she murmured. 

“Okay,” Ray said, absorbing the information. “Okay, wait. I don’t… I never minded that you didn’t talk about your family and I mean no offense, but who the hell names their kid ‘ _Five_ ’?”

“Our father did,” Allison said, a curtness to her voice that was unusual. “Our father was that kind of man. I guess I should tell you more about our family, because when Five wakes up… oh, _shit_.” She hit her forehead with the palm of her hand. “What time is it? Past seven?”

“I think, maybe. What is it, Allison? What’s wrong?”

“I promised Delonda I would help her clean up the storeroom for the baby. She’ll be worried if I don’t come and she must have left the beauty parlor already, so I can’t warn her, but Five is still unconscious and I can’t leave—”

“Allison, hey, hey,” Ray said, catching Allison’s fluttering hands to still them. “I can watch over your brother and you can go help Delonda. Problem solved.”

“You mean I would… leave him here with you,” Allison said with a skepticism that was honestly a little vexing. 

“Well, yes. What, you think I can’t take care of your brother?”

“That’s _not_ what I’m worried about.”

“Then what are you worried about? It looks like he’ll sleep through the night anyway. If he wakes up, I can feed him some of that broth you made the other day. It’ll be all right.”

Allison pursed her mouth, casting another look at her brother. “When he wakes up, he might be confused and disoriented. That will make him… jumpy. If he freaks out, tell him you’re my husband. In fact, you should say my name before you say anything else. Tell him I’ll be back soon. All right?”

“All right,” Ray said, made uneasy by Allison’s warnings. The boy didn’t look like he could be a day over fifteen at most. Ray wasn’t a brawler by any means, but surely he could handle a sick kid half his size, even if the boy was like Allison and knew how to fight. “It’ll be fine. You don’t have to worry.”

“He can be abrasive. Don’t take anything he says to heart, he’s an asshole to everyone. He’s not… he won’t behave like any kid you know. Or like anyone you know, for that matter.”

“I’m starting to reconsider my offer,” Ray said jokingly, though he was getting genuinely unsettled. “Why are you going out of your way to help him if he’s so terrible?”

“I told you; he’s my brother. And I have some questions for him.” Allison squeezed Ray’s hands, standing up. “Thank you so much for this. I’ll be as quick as I can. And, uh… if he wakes up, one other thing you should tell him is what day it is. The place, the day and the year.”

“All right,” Ray said.

His confusion must have been obvious, because Allison added, “As I said, he’ll probably be disoriented. This will settle him.”

She walked over to her brother and rested a hand lightly on top of his head, the gesture a little awkward, like she wasn’t sure whether to stroke his hair or not. “Be a good boy to Ray, will you?” she said, smirking a little at some inside joke.

She grabbed her purse, swung by Ray again to give him a quick kiss, and took off after another promise that she would be back at the soonest, leaving Ray with his white, underage brother-in-law. He’d wondered about Allison’s family before, because how could he not, and he’d never imagined anyone looking like Five. Hell, he’d never imagined someone named _Five_. With soft-footed steps, Ray approached the couch to examine the boy. All of Allison’s warnings made him feel as though he were sneaking into the lair of a sleeping dragon, but the boy’s juvenile face didn’t feel very threatening. He looked to be somewhere between twelve and fifteen, and one of the few tidbits of information that Ray had managed to gleam about Allison’s past was that she’d left home at eighteen. Given that she’d just turned thirty-two, she must have not lived with Five at all, but despite this and their lack of biological relation, there hadn’t been a hint of hesitation in the way she’d called him her brother. Another thing that struck Ray as strange, was how Allison had found him in that back alley, in a white neighborhood she should have had no business in. It seemed neigh impossible for her to have been on a stroll and stumbled on him by chance, so had she known her brother would be there? _How_ had she known, since as far as Ray was aware, she hadn’t been in touch with her family for years? Either there was a lot she hadn’t told him yet or—Ray felt queasy to even think it—she’d out right _lied_ to him.

“Who _are_ you?” he murmured to the sleeping boy.

With a sick, stomach-churning feeling of guilt, Ray slipped a finger under Five’s sleeve to pull it up and reveal the tattoo on his wrist. He sucked in a breath when he saw that it was the same design as Allison’s—a black open umbrella inside a black circle—then jumped when the boy mumbled something indistinct.

Ray had taken an instinctive step back, but he forced himself to get closer again. This was a kid, he reasoned himself, not a bomb. “Five?” he called tentatively, feeling weird about saying a number out loud and meaning it as a name. “Can you hear me?”

“Not again,” the boy muttered, smacking his lips and then shaking his head from side to side. “Please, _please_ , I _can’t_.”

Made bolder by the heartbreaking note of _pleading_ in the boy’s voice, Ray reached out to touch his shoulder and wake him up from what looked like a nightmare. He’d done things that he’d immediately regretted before, like that time at fifteen when he’d mouthed off to a cop, but he didn’t even have the opportunity to feel regret before Five’s eyes shot open, only for Ray to find himself shoved down on his back the next second. His head narrowly missed the corner of the coffee table. The breath was kicked out of him and then a forearm was pressed across his throat as the boy straddled his chest to keep him down. Open and up close, his irises were a thin dark blue-grey circle around blown-wide pupils; they were flitting quickly as though he were still half-caught in the dream he’d been having and couldn’t quite focus. The lack of focus didn’t diminish one bit the sheer force of his fury.

“Who are you?” he shouted in Ray’s face. “Are you commission? Did she send you?”

Ray gripped the arm crushing his throat, trying to relieve the pressure, but Five’s hold on him was iron. Ray was really being manhandled by a hundred-pound boy, who from the wild look in his eyes might just go and murder him if he thought Ray had been sent by whoever ‘she’ was. What had Allison said? _You should say my name before you say anything else._

“Al—Alli— _Allison_ ,” Ray managed to articulate.

The name triggered an immediate reaction, though not the kind that Ray had hoped. “What do you mean, ‘Allison’?” Five lurched forward, increasing the pressure on Ray’s throat. A fine sheet of perspiration covered his face and he smelled sour, like stale sweat, sickness and unwashed teenage boy. “Did you do something to my sister?” he snarled. “Where is she? If you touched her, I swear I’ll kill you!”

The edges of Ray’s vision were starting to blur, his lungs protesting the lack of air and the crushing weight of the boy’s body on his ribcage. Frustrated that Five didn’t seem to realize Ray couldn’t answer his questions if he didn’t let him _speak_ , Ray pounded on the floor with the open palm of his hand, then pointed his finger in direction of the chimney mantle where a framed picture of his wedding with Allison sat. Five frowned and looked where Ray pointed at, then his eyes went wide as he took in the picture. He straightened up, putting less weight into his arm, and Ray finally could talk. “Husband,” he rasped, and coughed. “I’m Allison’s _husband_. She’s fine, she’ll be— _cough_ —back soon.”

Five was staring at the picture, gaping at it. He wasn’t trying to squash Ray’s windpipe anymore, for which Ray was grateful, but he was still sitting on his chest and Ray couldn’t get up.

“Do you mind…” Ray said and trailed off, nervous he would trigger another attack by saying the wrong thing.

But Five merely moved away, absentmindedly, his eyes on the wedding picture. “Allison got married,” he murmured. His eyes swiveled back to Ray, looking like they were seeing him for the first time. “And you are…”

“Her husband. My name is Raymond Chestnut,” Ray said, rubbing his throat. Remembering what Allison had said about her brother being confused when he woke up, Ray added, “We’re in Dallas. This is November 15, 1963.”

“November 1963,” the boy repeated. He squeezed his eyes shut and sunk his face in his hands, rubbing it vigorously like he was still trying to wake up. “Shit. Do you have coffee? I need coffee, I can’t _think_ like this. And something to write with.”

“What?” Ray said, the whiplash between physical assault and mundane demands too sudden for his mind to process.

Five lowered his hands, casting Ray a dubious look between his fingers. “Coffee. Pen, pencil, paper, a fucking napkin—anything I can write on.”

It wasn’t Ray’s first time being condescended at by a white person, but it had never been by someone so young. Well, Allison _had_ warned him about her brother’s attitude; at least she’d said it was undiscriminating assholery. And this was Allison’s family, so Ray should make an effort to be accommodating.

“I can find you something better than a napkin,” Ray said. He swallowed gingerly, which hurt a little but not too badly, and then pushed himself up. “And I’ll make you coffee.”

Ray started a pot of coffee in the kitchen, checking regularly on his young brother-in-law to make sure he wasn’t about to fly off the handle again. Five had dragged himself on the floor to sit with his back against the couch and was holding his head in his hands. Ray found paper and a pencil, then went back to him cautiously.

“Coffee will be ready soon,” he said, holding out his offerings. 

Five snatched the pencil and paper from his hands. “Thanks,” he murmured before he started writing frantically.

Ray tried to get a glimpse at what he was writing, but he couldn’t decipher Five’s chicken scratch hand at a quick glance and didn’t want to be too obvious about what he was doing. Though he was getting more confident that Five wouldn’t hurt him now that he knew Ray was Allison’s husband, he didn’t want to chance it. Even now that he’d woken up, the boy looked like he should be lying down, his eyes punched-in-the-face bruised, his hands shaking a little, but self-preservation made Ray hold back his concern. Allison would handle it when she’d come home, since she presumably had some experience dealing with that strangely murderous child.

Five paused in his writing, exhaling loudly through his nose and tapping the nib of his pencil against the paper, leaving smudged marks on the white surface. Fearing it was a mark of irritation, Ray edged away warily, but all Five said was, “I’m sorry.”

“About trying to kill me, you mean?” Ray ventured.

The look Five cast up was so sharp Ray could almost feel it. “Believe me,” he said, “if I’d really been trying to kill you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” His tone was more matter of fact than threatening, which somehow made the declaration more chilling. “I was just a little… I wasn’t entirely in my right mind. So I apologize if I startled you.”

‘Startled’ was a hell of a euphemism for what had happened, but Ray felt it would do no good to start nitpicking Five’s apology. “Apology accepted.”

“We’re apparently…” Five twirled his pencil, as though looking for the right word. “… _family_ , since you married my sister, so we should at least be cordial to each other.”

“Uh huh. We probably should. I think the coffee might be ready now.”

“Thank _god_.”

Ray went back to the kitchen, poured Five a cup and brought it to him. The boy inhaled its content as quickly as he’d attacked Ray earlier, then demanded more, so that Ray decided it was more convenient to bring the whole pot. Five continued writing sprawling notes on the paper Ray had given him, most of it numbers from the look of it. His writing was so frenetic that the pointy end of the pencil’s lead snapped, but this didn’t slow Five at all. His attention was half on his obscure calculations, half on the coffee, leaving what little he had to spare to a halted conversation with Ray.

“I suppose you can’t be convinced not to mention this… incident to Allison,” he said, not bothering to look up at Ray.

“I try not to lie to my wife,” Ray said.

Five made a noise that sounded approving. “How long have you two been married?” 

“We’ll celebrate our first-year anniversary in a few days.”

“Huh. Congratulations. Do you love her?”

Was this an interrogation or the most awkward attempt at small talk Ray had ever known? He couldn’t decide. “I wouldn’t have married her if I didn’t love her.”

Five stopped writing again and put down his pencil on the floor. “How much has Allison told you about us?”

“Us?”

“Our family. The Hargreeves. Did she ever mention the Umbrella Academy?”

Ray sat down in the armchair across the coffee table, thinking of the umbrella tattoo on both Allison’s and Five’s wrists. Were they a family or a cult? “She didn’t say much,” he said. “I didn’t expect her younger brother to be white, for instance. That part was a surprise.”

“I see that she hasn’t told you anything about _me_ ,” Five said dryly.

“What do you mean? You’re not her brother?”

Though it felt like Allison had hidden from him a lot more than he’d initially assumed, Ray had at least accepted that Five really was her brother, as the word ‘sister’ had come out of his mouth as naturally as the word ‘brother’ had come out of Allison’s. Was he wrong even about this?

“Oh, I _am_ her brother. I’m just not her _younger_ brother.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t follow. What do you mean?”

“It’s probably best if Allison explains it to you herself,” Five said. “I wouldn’t want to step on her toes. If you’ve been married to her for a year, I assume you’ve seen her mad before.”

Ray let out an unvoluntary snort of laughter. “Okay, I see your point. But when you talk about your family… Do you mean Allison has other siblings?”

“You’ve never met any of the others, then,” Five said instead of answering, rolling his lips in displeasure. “I was afraid of that.”

“I haven’t met them that I know of, at least,” Ray said, trying to quell his bitterness. Allison would be back soon and explain everything—probably. 

“If you’d met them, you would know it, trust me.” The ghost of a smile fleeted across the boy’s lips. “They don’t exactly blend in. They should be around here, though,” he said, but this time he sounded like he was talking to himself, “that’s the only thing that makes sense. Or they were, at least. But something doesn’t add up. November 15, you said?”

“Yeah, today is November 15,” Ray said. “Why, what’s wrong?”

Five buried a hand in his hair and tugged at it. “The numbers don’t add up. It can’t be November 15. I think I’ve lost time. Fucking hell.” He looked up at Ray, messy hair falling in his bleary eyes. “Do you have anything stronger I can put in my coffee?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Truth to be told, I also wanted to write this fic to have Ray meet Five. Talk about a missed opportunity!


	2. Chapter 2

Allison hurried back home as soon as she possibly could, begging out of Delonda’s offer for a coffee and a chat. Unease poked her in the stomach, an undefined dread at the thought of how long she’d left Five alone with her husband. Five was unpredictable—he didn’t use to be, not when they were kids and it was laughably easy to push his buttons, but the person who’d come back on the day of their father’s funeral wasn’t the boy who’d disappeared at lunch when they were thirteen. The few fleeting days they’d had with him two years ago weren’t enough for Allison to have taken the measure of him. The one thing she knew for sure was that he was dangerous, though she didn’t think he would hurt Ray knowing he was Allison’s husband. But even that wasn’t a certainty, as she had no idea how much time had passed for him and how that time might have changed him again.

She entered through the front door, calling, “Ray? I’m home,” and immediately Ray rushed into the entrance hall. He looked unhurt, to her relief, though a little rattled. “So,” he said, his tone conversational but hushed, “your brother woke up.”

“Are you all right?” Allison asked worriedly.

Ray arched an eyebrow. “Interesting that you would ask how I am rather than how _he_ is,” he said.

“Well, I mean,” Allison said, flustered and feeling at fault, “of course I want to know how he is, but I know he can be a little, um— _confrontational_.”

“That’s one way to put it. You said he would be jumpy and he was, literally. I’m fine, but it was so sudden, I didn’t have time to see him jump me.”

“How do you mean?” Allison asked, her blood running cold at the thought that Five might have used his power in front of Ray.

“That it happened really fast. Why, what did you think I meant?”

“No, nothing.” Allison reached out to examine Ray’s face for bruises. “Did he hurt you?”

“I’m fine, really,” Ray said, wrapping a warm hand around her wrist and leaning his cheek into her palm. “He stopped as soon as he realized I was your husband. Though when I first mentioned your name, he thought I might have done something to you. But we cleared that misunderstanding and he even apologized, so it’s all good.”

“Five, apologize?” Allison said with a snort. “That’s a first. Consider yourself privileged.”

Setting her purse down next to the umbrella stand, Allison walked into the living room, where she found her brother sitting on the floor surrounded by messily scribbled on sheets of papers, as well as an empty cup and an equally empty pot of coffee. He looked up at the sound of her footsteps, the tight expression of concentration on his face smoothing out.

“Hey, Allison,” he said, the corner of his mouth curving up. “You look better than the last time I saw you.”

“And you look worse,” she said. 

It wasn’t just a tit-for-tat reply; he did look terrible, his face too pale and his cheeks too hollow, like a third-world starving child from one of those guilt-inducing commercials. He actually looked worse now that he was awake than when he’d been unconscious.

“Gee, thanks,” he scoffed.

She crouched down next to him, giving the papers on the floor a cursory glance—his handwriting hadn’t improved with the years and she couldn’t read any of it. He’d already absorbed himself in his writing and startled when she touched his shoulder. She pulled him in, carefully wrapping her arms around his thin frame and feeling him go stiff as a board. 

“What are you doing?” he asked tensely, though he made no move to push her away.

“I’m hugging you,” Allison said. “Just let it happen, old man.”

She felt him relax by increments, as though he had to fight himself to manage it, but he didn’t return the hug. It was even more awkward than the hug she’d shared with Vanya at their father’s funeral, but Allison was committed to it. Eventually, Five exhaled slowly against her neck; his breath burned her skin and she pulled away, frowning at him and cupping his forehead with a hand.

“You’re too warm,” she said accusingly.

“I’m fine,” he said, swatting her hand away. 

“Never believe my brother when he says he’s fine,” Allison said loudly for Ray’s benefit. “He might just be bleeding out from somewhere you can’t see.”

“I’m not injured,” Five said.

“I know,” she said. “Not that I would take your word for it, but I checked. You’re clearly not well, though. What the hell happened to you, Five?”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted in a lower voice. “I remember the jump, but—” She made a face to stop him from saying too much and he rolled his eyes. “Talk to your husband. I won’t keep pussyfooting forever around the subject of our family.”

“And _you_ should go back to sleep,” Allison said, hauling herself to her feet and pulling him up by the arm with her.

“Hey, hands off!” he protested. He didn’t blink out of her grip, though, which told her everything she needed to know about how he felt.

She leaned in, saying into his ear, “Don’t make me make you.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” he hissed between his teeth, sending her a venomous look and jerking his arm back to himself. “Not in front of your husband. He doesn’t know anything, does he?”

She narrowed her eyes warningly at him. “Go the fuck to sleep,” she said. “Let me deal with Ray.”

“Good luck with that,” he said. His legs wobbled and he dropped sitting on the couch, with the annoyed expression of a wet cat at his body’s betrayal.

Little shit, she thought, and gave his chest a shove to force him down on the couch. Despite his claim that he was fine, he let her do it too easily. The moment he was lying down, his eyelids drooped and his breathing quieted. She watched him for a moment, feeling a mix of exasperation and fondness war each other in her chest. It had been two years, and to see him look identical to when he was thirteen was still a mind trip, something she had to get used to all over again. It brought her back, to see his face, and she felt as though she were thirteen herself, wearing her Umbrella Academy uniform and her domino mask, walking with her brothers in their number order to line up for a picture, with Klaus sauntering between Five and her. _Number Three!_ she could almost hear her father bellow. _Stop playing with your hair and stand still for the picture!_

Allison sighed shakily, covering Five with the blanket again and stepping away from the couch. She turned toward Ray, who stood leaning against the pillar separating the living room from the dining area. She wondered how much he’d heard of her conversation with Five, how many questions he had for her. What should she tell him? Everything? She’d never had to explain her strange childhood to anyone. Patrick had already known about it, at least the part that was public knowledge. She wouldn’t know where to start to make Ray believe her, not just about her powers and her odd family, but also about the fact that she’d _traveled from the future._ He would think she was either crazy or making it up.

“Let’s go talk in the kitchen,” she said quietly so as to not disturb Five, stooping to pick up the cup and the coffee pot that her brother had abandoned on the floor.

She walked past her husband and he followed her in the kitchen without saying a word. It was a fiendishly efficient tactic of his, the patient and silent waiting for her to speak first. She always ended up cracking under the pressure of that silence; having grown up in a family where they all spoke over each other and you had to fight for attention, it made her feel wrong-footed to be the target of his quiet and expectant focus.

“I hope you didn’t let Five drink all the coffee in our house,” she said, putting down the cup in the sink and setting the pot next to the coffee maker. 

She rummaged through the cupboard to get their pack of coffee, though what she was really doing was stalling for more time. She had her back on Ray and could feel his eyes burrowing a hole in the back of her head. She sighed, closing the cupboard and leaning her hips against the counter. “Will you stop this, please?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Ray said.

“Precisely. It’s annoying.” She knocked her knuckles against the counter edge and then turned around. He was observing her, arms crossed over his chest. “We were adopted by a billionaire named Reginald Hargreeves,” she said. Start simple, build up from there. _Once upon a time, there were seven little children and a Big Bad Billionaire…_

“A billionaire? That explains some things.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, unsure if she should get offended.

“Just that you’re obviously used to fine things.” His mouth slanted into a smile, probably to show he didn’t mean this as a reproach. “You deserve fine things, so this never bothered me. But please go on.”

“Right. So, Reginald Hargreeves. He bought us from our birth parents—something he liked to remind us of, in case we were under the illusion that we had another family waiting for us out there. He wasn’t a man who enjoyed being around children, and he left all the tedious bits of childbearing to, um, a nanny, Grace, who we called ‘mom.’ He didn’t adopt us for the joys of being a father, it was more some sort of… experiment, I guess. He wanted to mold us to his liking, turn us into his loyal little soldiers. He didn’t even give us names; instead he _numbered_ us—I was Number Three, and Five was, well, Number Five, obviously. When we got older, he let Mom—well, Grace, our nanny—help us choose names for ourselves, but he never used them. Five was always a fussy little shit and he couldn’t settle on a name he liked, so he remained just ‘Five.’ I think he prefers it that way, for some reason.”

She paused for breath, trying to gauge Ray’s reaction. He looked like he was just trying to digest the information, as this must have been very different from what he’d expected—and it was only half of the full story, though everything she’d said was true enough. They’d never been children to Dad, but rather his own superpowered army that he’d built from the ground up.

“Your dad sounds…” Ray started tentatively.

“Like a piece of shit, yes,” Allison said, lending bite to the words so he would know he could talk badly of her father.

“How many of you were there?”

“Seven. Well.” She swallowed; even fifteen years later, it still hurt to think that they weren’t seven anymore. When Five had gone missing, she hadn’t allowed herself to think that they were down one, because Five couldn’t be dead—and he hadn’t been. “We used to be seven. One of us—Ben, Number Six—he died when we were seventeen.”

“I’m sorry,” Ray said with such earnestness that she felt herself fall in love with him all over again.

“It’s all right. It was a long time ago.”

“Are all your other siblings white? I’m sorry, I just have a hard time imagining what it was like.”

“They aren’t all white, but I was the only black kid. Diego was born in Mexico, and Ben in Korea. We’re from all around the world. And honestly, for all his faults, I think our father really didn’t care about race and he never made us feel like it was a big deal. We grew up isolated from the rest of the world, so for us it was just one of several ways we were different from each other. Racism was a nebulous concept we learned about in our history lessons, not something that impacted our lives. It was only out of home that I was confronted with it.” 

The difference in their powers had mattered more, but Allison was far enough into her tale that she could admit to herself that she wasn’t going to tell Ray about it if she didn’t need to. The part she’d already confessed was hard enough to swallow. 

“You know,” Ray said, “a world where race doesn’t matter is exactly what I fight for every day of my life… but damn, not like _this_.”

“Yeah,” Allison said with a chuckle. “Reginald Hargreeves is no one’s role model, but this innocence is something I miss.”

“Thank you for telling me about it,” he said, walking up to her with his hands spread, about to wrap them around her hips—and then stopping in his tracks, looking like he’d been hit by a thought. “Wait a minute. There’s something I don’t get. You said your brother Ben died when you were seventeen—all of you?”

“Yes, we were all the same age. We were—” She trailed off, realizing what was bothering Ray right before he said it.

“Then how come your brother who’s sleeping on our couch looks nowhere near your age?”

 _Shit. Shit, shit._ Damn Five, she thought, but that was unfair. It was her own fault for letting both Five’s apparent and real ages slip from her mind. Speaking about their childhood had made her feel as though he was still the same age as she was. It was hard to remember that he was really fifty-eight—or more, depending on how much time had passed for him—but even his thirteen-year old appearance felt like an ill-fitting costume. Deep down, when she didn’t think too hard about it, Allison considered her brother as being her age, just as he’d been when they were children. Of course, she now had to find a not too extraordinary way to explain the whole Five situation to Ray. 

“And he scoffed at me when I called him your ‘younger brother’,” Ray went on, speaking faster as a look of growing incomprehension bloomed on his face. “I couldn’t make sense of why. I can’t make sense of it at all. Unless you’re lying to me—but why lie about this?”

Allison thought she was going to choke on guilt—she wasn’t lying per se, but she wasn’t telling the whole truth. Admitting it now felt too overwhelming, though, so instead she prevaricated, “Five isn’t as young as he looks.”

“By _fifteen_ years?”

“It’s a medical condition,” Allison said, struck by inspiration. She was reasonably sure that this was a thing. Right? “I know it seems strange, but I swear to you that we grew up together and that he’s actually an adult. You’ve spoken with him, haven’t you? You must have realized he can’t be a kid.”

“I suppose not,” Ray said reluctantly, most likely because he couldn’t think of a better explanation. “So he’s your age, then?”

“Yes,” Allison said, because it was easier to let Ray believe this than tell him Five was actually almost twice that age. “Five ran away from home when we were teenagers and has had to fend for himself since then. That’s why he’s a little…”

“Unfit for human company?” Ray suggested, which made her laugh, both because of what an accurate description of her brother it was and out of relief that Ray had relaxed enough to be joking.

“Yep, that sums him up pretty well,” she said.

“Where are your other siblings?”

“I don’t know,” Allison said. “We got split up, and I haven’t seen any of them in two years. I don’t even know—” _‘If they’re still alive’_ was what she meant to say, but this was too big a fear to say out loud.

“Your brother seems to think they’re somewhere around here.”

“Does he, now?” Allison murmured. “I’ll have to ask him about it when he wakes up.”

Five didn’t wake up until much later in the evening, and he acted so muddled that Allison decided to put off her interrogation and gave him some chicken broth instead. Five ate a little and fell back asleep immediately. Allison tried not to worry too much about it. Five’s powers had always been energy-intensive, so if he’d overdone it food and rest were all he needed to get better. She went to bed praying he wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night and blink away, vanishing from her life again like a mirage.

He was the first thing she checked up on when she got up the next morning, and when she saw he was still there she was overcome by a full-bodied rush of relief. He was sleeping soundly, one arm hanging from the couch, unbothered by the ray of sunlight that filtered between the curtains and tickled his nose. His face had regained some color and he looked less like a sick child.

“How’s your brother?” Ray asked, coming up behind her and kissing her neck.

“Still here,” Allison said, letting out a slow breath.

“Were you worried he wouldn’t be?”

“I told you, he ran away when we were kids. He tends to skip out on people.”

“How long was he gone?”

“Over sixteen years the first time,” Allison said. “Then he came back two years ago, but we were separated again.”

Ray hooked his chin over her shoulder, his breath warm against the side of her neck. “You must have missed him very much.”

Allison didn’t know whether to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to that statement. When Five had just left, she’d stubbornly refused to miss him, because why waste energy missing someone who’d run away on them and would be back soon anyway? Later, when ‘soon’ had passed and Five wasn’t back, before going to bed she’d taken to muttering rumors to herself that she would aim at him, stupid as that was. _I heard a rumor you stopped being a jackass. I heard a rumor that you realized you missed us. I heard a rumor that you came back. I heard a rumor that you were fine._ After a while, she’d just learned to live with him being gone, just as she had to live with Ben’s death in the following years.

“We don’t really admit to that kind of thing in my family,” she said with a wobbly smile. 

“Well, it’s never too late to start sharing and caring. I guess that when we’ll have children, I’ll just have to look to your father to know what _not_ to do.”

Oh, damn, that _hurt_. Allison thought of Claire and it felt like being punched in the solar plexus. She opened her mouth on a silent cry, trying to blink away her tears, trying to regain her composure before Ray noticed something was wrong, which was when she heard a thud on their front door. She and Ray both jumped, Ray’s hands dropping from her shoulders. Allison grabbed the baseball bat that they kept propped against the console table in the entrance. She adjusted her grip on it, lifting it next to her head. 

Another thump made the door tremble and then it swung open, knocked down from the outside, revealing two policemen pointing their guns at her.

“Dallas police, hands in the air!”

Allison’s first instinct was to step back as they marched into the house, but her next thought was for Five in the living room. _The police can’t find him here_ , she thought. If they did, they would think that Allison and Ray had done something to him, they would take him away, and he was still unwell, maybe still not back at full power. Ray must have thought something similar, because he stood in a way that blocked the policemen’s view of the living room. He had his arms up and his hands behind his head.

“Allison,” he said, “put the bat down.”

It went against everything she’d ever been taught to comply without a fight, but nothing good would come out of her resisting the policemen. If Five woke up and saw her fight, he would jump into the fray, no questions asked, even if he was still weakened, because some instincts ran deeper than thought—despite everything, she and her siblings had always had each other’s backs in a fight. The policemen were unlikely to react gracefully to a feral child attacking them.

She dropped the bat and it clanked onto the floor. Raising her hands, she asked, “What’s going on, officers? Why are—”

“Raymond Chestnut,” said the policeman who was aiming at her, dismissing her question, “you’re under arrest!”

At the same time, the other officer pushed Ray down to his knees and twisted his arms behind his back.

“Wait!” Allison exclaimed. “He hasn’t done anything, why is he under arrest?”

“Assault and battery,” the policeman replied. “Or do you deny beating up that man at Odessa’s?”

“No, no, no, that was me!” Allison cried out. “ _I_ did it. My husband has done nothing wrong, you can’t arrest him!”

“Allison!” Ray called. The other policeman was hauling him up to his feet. “It’s all right. It’s gonna be all right.”

“But—” 

At this moment, Allison saw her brother stir on the couch, finally being pulled out of sleep by the ruckus. He blinked, turned his head; Allison saw the shape of her name forming on his lips. She locked eyes with him, trying to convey as clearly as she could that he shouldn’t do anything, shouldn’t make a sound. Wordless communication was something they’d developed as an art back in the days of the Umbrella Academy, but it’d been so long, even more so for him. He stared back at her, confused, poised in a half-sitting position, but he must have read her correctly because he didn’t move or speak up.

“I’ll get you out of here, baby,” she told Ray, feeling her eyes well up with tears. This was all her fault, her own damn fault, why hadn’t she controlled herself? “I promise you. I’m so sorry.”

“I know,” he said. “I’ll be fine. Ain’t my first time, after all. I lo—”

The policeman who was holding him by the elbow cuffed the back of his head and then dragged him out of the house, while the other policeman stepped back out, keeping his gun trained on Allison. The door slammed shut and Allison was left feeling like a hurricane had ravaged her house. A sob quaked inside her chest and she stifled it by pressing her hand against her mouth. She couldn’t lose it, not now.

“Allison?” Shit, she’d almost forgotten about Five. “What was that? What happened?”

“That was the police,” Allison said, unable to completely suppress the tremor in her voice. “They arrested Ray for assault and battery, but he didn’t do it. _I_ hit that man.”

“I’m sure he deserved it,” Five said in complete earnestness. “Do you want me to—”

“No!” Allison shouted. She pinched the bridge of her nose, loudly expulsing air. The next time she spoke, she sounded more collected. “No, it’d only make things worse. I, I’ll find a way. I have to go to the police station. Where’s my purse? Will you be all right while I’m gone?” 

She was going through the room as she spoke, looking for her purse and her coat, nervous energy buzzing under her skin, where it would gather and eventually explode messily. She couldn’t deal with Five right now. She heard the couch creak as he shifted on it, then the thumping sound of his feet hitting the floor as he stood up.

“Really, Allison, I could just—”

“No,” she snapped, levelling a hard stare at him. With his mussed head and his untucked shirt, he looked more like a child than he’d ever had, even when he’d actually been thirteen. “You stay put until I’m back, all right?”

He returned her look, unimpressed, and his jaw worked, creasing the dimple in his cheek. “Don’t try to pull a Dad on me. Unless you rumor me, I’ll do whatever the hell I want.”

Right, authoritative didn’t work on Five. Allison switched tactics, turning her commanding tone into a pleading one. “Please, Five. I have to go help my husband, but when I’m back I want to talk about finding the others. You don’t know where they are, do you?”

“No,” he said, though the admission seemed to cost him. “But I’ll find them.”

“I want to find them too, but it’s better if we stick together. Isn’t it?”

This hit the mark; the wrinkle between his eyebrows disappeared, the harsh pinch of his mouth softening. “All right. I’ll wait for you.”

“Good,” she said, putting on her coat. “While I’m gone, help yourself with anything, though I’d prefer if you left _some_ coffee for us. And take a shower, please.”

If he had anything to reply, she was gone before he could say it. 

—-

The hard bench of a cell at a police station wasn’t the most comfortable place there was, but it wasn’t the worst Ray had known either. The other men who shared with him the cell reserved for colored folks kept to themselves, which gave Ray the leisure to think back on the recent madness in his life. Getting arrested had only been the culmination of a strange twenty-four hours. It wasn’t even the worst part of it, as he’d anticipated and prepared for something like this, whereas he’d been struck unexpected by the arrival of his brother-in-law—who looked like a kid but apparently wasn’t one, and who from the sound of it had only refrained from murdering him out of cordiality for their family relation—and by the fairy-tale-like story of Allison’s childhood. Though it had sounded quite extraordinary, Ray chose to believe that she hadn’t lied to him, both because he wanted to trust her and because if she’d tried to spin some tale to him, why not decide on something less outlandish? 

It made for a lot to process, though, now that he had time to think about it—and he would have a lot more time for deep thoughts, if his past experience with being kept in custody was anything to go on. It did explain why Allison always seemed battle-ready. This was because she’d been _raised_ that way, like… like a _child soldier_. That explained Five’s murderousness, too, which presented a darker, distorted version of Allison’s combativity. Ray tried to picture Reginald Hargreeves in his mind. What kind of man did this to children? 

“Heavy is the head that wears the crown.”

The mangled Shakespeare line pulled Ray out of his thoughts and he looked to the other cell, separated from the one he was in by a row of steel bars, where the white men lingered. The one who’d spoken was shaggy-haired and sitting with his back against the bars, a visible slump to his shoulders, as though the weight of the world sat on it.

“Actually,” Ray said, unable to help himself, “the line goes, ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.’”

It was always a risk, addressing the men in the other cell, but the Shakespeare-quoting one merely rolled against the bars to turn around and look at Ray, with a weary but sympathetic air. He looked about Ray’s age and wore a long coat that was a dubious shade of white, had long curly hair and a bushy goatee tied at the end.

“Your dad made you read Shakespeare too, huh,” he said, commiserating. “Hello, fellow sufferer.”

“No,” Ray said, shaking his head and laughing. “I actually taught it.”

“Oh, so you’re a professor. Nice. I mean, teaching Shakespeare to hormonal twenty-something sounds painful, but to each their own.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Ray said, smiling ruefully. The pang of regret he always felt when thinking about his teaching days had softened with time, so that it was now a mellow sort of feeling, a melancholic but somewhat pleasant sensation. “But I don’t teach anymore; life took me on a different path.”

“Yeah,” the other man said, staring into the empty space in front of him. “I know all about different paths. I know aaallll about life verging into an unexpected direction. One day you’re minding your own business, the next you have all those people relying on you, and looking up to you for guidance, and listening to what you say even when all you say is stupid shit…. Oh, shut up.”

“Beg your pardon?” Ray said, taken aback by the sudden expletive and getting a little wary.

“Not you, sorry. But where are my manners? My mother would be aghast. I’m Klaus Hargreeves, pleasure meeting you.”

“Raymond Chestnut,” Ray replied automatically, reaching between the bars for a handshake before he could fully process the name given to him. “Wait, Hargreeves, you said?”

“Yeah, that’s my name.” Klaus Hargreeves’ face fell. “Oh no, please tell me you haven’t heard of me.”

“Not exactly, but… Hargreeves is my wife’s maiden name.”

“Your wife, really? I’ve never met any other Hargreeves—well, except for my siblings and dear old papa. What’s your wife’s first name?”

“Allison.”

“Holy shit. Is her birthday October 1?”

“Yes.”

“No _way_. You’re Allison’s husband?” Klaus let out a delighted bark of laughter, inserting his arm between the bars and grabbing Ray’s arm at the elbow. Ray eyed his wrist, looking for the trademark umbrella tattoo, and indeed he could see the dark outline of a circle and the upper part of an open umbrella poking out of the sleeve. “So you’re my brother-in-law! Hear that, everyone?” he exclaimed, turning toward his cellmates while he clumsily slapped Ray’s upper arm. “That guy is my brother-in-law!”

The men in both the white and the colored sections were starting to give them looks, some simply bemused, others getting charged with hostility.

“Yes, yes,” Ray said, returning Klaus’ arm grip to try and get his attention. “Let’s be a little quieter about it, all right?”

“Sure,” Klaus said amiably, though he was still beaming. The difference between his reaction and what Five’s had been was so extreme that it was hard to believe they were family—though Ray could now see what Five had meant when he’d said that his siblings didn’t ‘blend in.’

“So you’re one of Allison’s siblings?” Ray said, though at this point he was only stating the obvious. It felt like one hell of a coincidence that he’d learned about Allison’s family only yesterday after knowing her for almost two years, and had now met two of them in the space of less than a day.

“Yeah, yeah,” Klaus said. “Small world, right? How is my favorite sister? I mean, she must be doing well for herself, married to a fine man like you. You’re attractive; I bet you and Allison make a stunning couple. And you’re a _professor_ —well, a former professor, but whatever, still classy. I never met her first husband, though it sounds like he was a prick anyway. Have you met any of the others?”

Ray hadn’t known Allison had married before, but it looked like it wouldn’t take much to get Klaus off track, so he abstained from asking about it. “Actually, yes,” he said. “Only yesterday, in fact, so that’s… yes, small world. I met, uh, Five.”

“Five is back?” Klaus said, eyes widening. He chuckled, as though picturing something amusing. “So you’ve met the family’s resident psycho. I’m sure fun times were had. Must have been somewhat of a shock.”

“It was. Quite, well, quite literally, in fact.”

Klaus said cheerfully, “That sounds like Five, yeah. But hey, you lived to tell the tale! Now you’re really part of the family.” He leaned the side of his head against the bars, his eyes getting that vague look again. “So, wow. Allison and little Five are alive. Hear that? We’re not an only child, after all.” His eyes flicked to the side, and Ray had the distinct impression that his attention was on something else for a moment. “Why are you here, anyway?”

“I was arrested for assault and battery. They say I hit a white man.”

“But you didn’t?”

“No,” Ray said without elaborating, unwilling to talk about Allison’s involvement where anyone else could hear.

Klaus must have read something in his expression, though, because his face broke into a wide grin. “Ooohh, let me guess: Allison did it, didn’t she? She always had a mean right hook.”

It was said fondly, so at least Klaus shared his siblings’ casual relation to violence. “I’d rather not talk about it here, if you get my meaning,” Ray said in a low voice. 

Klaus swept a look around him, at the men who were still aiming scowls at him, which he didn’t seem to mind. “I get you,” he stage-whispered to Ray, miming pulling a zipper where his mouth was. “But man, that sucks that you ended up here. I bet that guy deserved what he got. We have to do something about it.”

“That’s nice of you,” Ray said, wondering who ‘we’ might be, “but I don’t see what you could—”

“No, no, I insist,” Klaus said, giving Ray’s wrist a casual squeeze through the bars. “Anything for family. You’re the first in-law I meet, so this must be celebrated—although there _was_ Harold Jenkins, but he dated Vanya for all of five minutes and I don’t know if it counts when they’re dead… _Yes_ , I’m focusing. Just sit and wait, my esteemed brother, you’ll be out in no time.”

“All right,” Ray murmured, overwhelmed by the chatter. What else was there to do but acquiesce?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So contrary to what it looks like right now, this fic isn't actually a retelling of season 2. This will be more obvious next chapter. Hope you enjoyed this one!


	3. Chapter 3

Five found in a cabinet the whiskey Raymond had refused to give him the day before and helped himself generously. It settled his nerves and blunted the edge of his persistent headache, though his brain still felt cottony. He ached everywhere and a lingering weakness weighted his limbs, like from the aftermath of a bad fever—he vaguely remembered Allison saying that he was too warm last night, so maybe he _had_ been sick. He was fuzzy on too many things for his liking, which wasn’t an entirely new experience, but fuzziness had only been acceptable when he’d had no one else to take care of but himself. Now he had to herd his wayward siblings back to 2019, which was a job that would need him working at full capacity. 

At least the coffee was good, a fact that Five marked as a point in Raymond’s favor, since Allison was a heathen about coffee. Raymond seemed like a Good Man, someone who fully committed to the weight of those capital letters, who worked at goodness the way Five worked at saving the world. Good People made Five feel on edge, but no one who bought good coffee could be too terrible and Raymond had acted rather graceful about Five’s little mishap from the day before. Allison didn’t just deserve someone normal; she deserved someone who strove for better, and good on him if Raymond managed to maintain that veneer. Not that it would matter for very long, of course, since they would leave for 2019 as soon as Five had managed to lay hands on his other siblings—and, well, had figured out a safe way for them to travel back, since his own time-traveling powers were a crapshoot. 

Five finished the knot on his tie, checking it in the bathroom mirror and giving himself a critical look. He’d taken a shower, as per Allison’s recommendations, had smoothed out his clothes and combed his hair. It was like putting on an armor and he felt better for it, but not by much, and he didn’t look great either. Why were his eyes so sunken? Why was his complexion so sallow? He knew he must have looked way worse for most of his time in the apocalypse, but at least then he hadn’t had to look at himself. Exiting hell had meant the return of mirrors, the new bane of his existence. Now he had to be _aware_ of how he looked, which had been excruciating during his first days at the Commission. He didn’t care whether others liked him or not, especially not his asshole coworkers, but he didn’t want people to look at him and see… something unkempt. _Unhinged_. He didn’t want anyone to see and be able to tell.

With an effort, Five pulled himself from his contemplation. Making sure he looked neat enough was one thing; spending too much time on it was nothing but vanity. He went back to the living room—well, _jumped_ back there, miscalculating and crashing into the couch, not his finest moment—and searched for his notes from yesterday. He barely had to look before finding them neatly piled on the coffee table, as though someone had put the papers here knowing he would need easy access to them. It was probably Allison—or maybe Raymond, since he seemed a thoughtful kind of person, but Five allowed himself the small indulgence of thinking that Allison had done it. 

Reading through his notes, he found with growing unease that he had a hard time understanding them. He’d often been told that his notes looked messy, often by Dolores, but they were always perfectly clear to him. The calculations mostly made sense, but he’d scribbled a lot of comments around them and now couldn’t remember what he’d meant, things like ‘how many times over?’ and ‘nuclear war’ and ‘variables unknown.’ Five could remember writing them, though the recollection was hazy, but not what the train of thoughts behind them had been. Back in the apocalypse, he’d frequently lost chunks of time, but there had always been an identifiable cause for it, be it alcohol, starvation, dehydration or sickness. Had the travel from 2019 to 1963 carrying his siblings shaken him so much? Traveling back had always been harder than traveling forward, and he’d never had to do it with other people in tow. Maybe he didn’t have to look further than this—he’d overreached himself and his body had retaliated, as it was wont to do, his willpower so often pushing him past the breaking point. Still, he couldn’t shake off a simmering sense of disquiet.

He heard a door open and his sister stormed into the room, her heels rattling on the floorboards. “Honor and dignity,” she was muttering between gritted teeth. “Honor and dignity.”

“Back already?” he asked. From the foul mood that she irradiated, he would venture that she hadn’t managed to get her husband out of jail.

“What do you mean, ‘already’? I’ve been gone for three hours,” she said, raising an eyebrow at him.

Had it been three hours? He couldn’t have taken more than half-an-hour to clean up, so that meant he’d spent over _two hours_ staring at his notes. It hadn’t felt like two hours. Fifteen minutes at most, maybe half-an-hour if he’d gotten really lost in thoughts, which happened. Was Allison messing with him? This didn’t feel like her brand of sibling ribbing, though. 

“I thought for sure you would be there the whole day,” he said, trying to cover for his confusion. Cold sweat made his shirt stick to his back.

“They wouldn’t let me see him!” Allison said, throwing her hands up in indignation. “And that asshole cop kept asking me for Ray’s name and saying he was in process for _three. fucking. hours._ I mean, he didn’t even bother _pretending_ that he wasn’t screwing with me. The nerve on that man!”

“Why didn’t you just rumor him?”

Allison’s face got pinched the way it did when she thought the reason was obvious and she couldn’t believe you were going to make her say it. “We live here, Five. We’re part of the civil rights movement, which means we’re under constant scrutiny from the authorities and no one knows the Umbrella Academy here. Anyway, I don’t do that anymore. I want to _earn_ what I have.”

“A nice sentiment, but all you’re earning right now is your husband in jail,” Five pointed out. She scowled at him and he raised his hands in surrender. “Your husband, your choice. Why did you come back already? I remember you being more combative. You probably could have pestered this cop into letting you see your husband.”

“They weren’t going to let me see him.” Allison put her purse down on the floor, turning away as she unbuttoned her coat. “And I wanted to check on you,” she added with forced casualness.

Five ground his teeth in annoyance. “I _told_ you I would wait. Next time put me on a leash if you don’t trust me.”

“Did it occur to you that I might be worried about your _health_ , you prick?” she said, whirling around to pin him with a glare. “I found you passed out in an alley. I couldn’t wake you up. You had a fever last night! Sue me for being a little concerned.”

It actually hadn’t occurred to him, so he gaped at her for a second like an idiot. “Well, I’m fine,” he said brusquely, looking down and shuffling fussily with his notes.

“You do look a bit better,” she said, examining him with an uncomfortably perceptive look.

“I am, yes. Right as rain,” he said with false cheer.

Allison sat down next to him on the couch. She was too close for comfort, but Five made a very real effort not to scoot over, as it would risk either vexing her (counterproductive, since she was the only sibling he had on hand right now) or making her think that something was wrong (not that anything was wrong, mind you, but he didn’t want Allison to get any more _concerned_ ).

“What’s all that?” she asked, jerking her chin at the papers on his lap. The couch shifted as she leaned a little into him, enough that he could feel the warmth seeping out of her body. He felt crowded, an itch under his skin, and he took a long, slow breath through his nose to make the feeling pass. 

“Preliminary thoughts on what we should do next,” he bullshitted with ease. “How long have you been here?”

“I landed in 1961, so over two years. What about you?”

“First thing I remember after the jump in 2019 is waking up in your living room with your husband hovering over me. But…” He hesitated, the thought of sharing his confusion with anyone, even his sister, making him uneasy. “I’ve lost time, I think. More happened between those two moments; I just don’t know _what_.”

“You think you were in that alley for a long time?” Allison asked. She had a strange expression, eyes flicking to the side to avoid his, her lips thinning.

“Don’t think so, or at least it doesn’t account for how much time I lost.”

“So you don’t think you were passed out in the alley for very long,” Allison insisted, and oh, now Five got it—she felt guilty that she hadn’t found him sooner. Ridiculous of her, as tracking him down after he’d been gone for two years—from her point of view—wasn’t her responsibility, but Five refrained from saying it.

“Yeah, probably not,” he said. He wasn’t sure at all, but at least she could stop wondering about it and focus on more important matters.

“So, how much time have you lost?”

“I’m… not sure.”

“You’re not sure? You?”

Five reined in irritation at her incredulity, though this was irritation that actually buffered an undercurrent of anxiety, because he always knew how much time had passed, and Allison was aware of it. His internal clock was impeccable, just like his sense of direction, a side effect of his powers. His siblings used to make a game out of asking him impromptu questions about it in the most inconvenient situations, like in the middle of a mission, or when he was concussed, or falling asleep on his lessons from training too hard, trying to see if they could trip him up into getting it wrong. Who knew Allison would finally win that stupid game without even playing.

“Well, yes. I probably got a little distracted by the _fifty-six-year_ time jump I did while carrying _five other people_ with me.”

He got up, feeling too antsy to stay sitting down. He wanted to go to the kitchen to get himself more coffee, but he didn’t dare jump given how wobblily he’d managed it earlier, and walking across the dining area for it would make it look like he was avoiding the conversation, which would get Allison even more on his case. Instead, he started pacing, hands buried in the pockets of his shorts.

“No need to get testy,” Allison said a little testily herself. “So how much time are we talking about? Hours, days? Months?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Five said, thinking about his sheets of calculations from last night. He’d been trying to make out how much time he’d lost, that he remembered, but toward the end the equations had trailed off into a jumbled mess. “More than a day, less than a month, is the best I can give you right now.”

“That’s… a pretty broad margin of error. And even just a day is a lot of time to lose. Are you sure the others are around here, in Dallas? They can’t have been… thrown off to some other place?”

“If both you and I landed here, then they probably did too. And Dallas makes sense—I wasn’t aiming for it, but it’s the place where I was before I jumped home in 2019. Homing pigeon instinct, if you will.”

“And could they be decades away from us? Or centuries?” Allison asked. “I haven’t met any of them, although I guess Dallas is a big place and it’s not like every part of it is easy access for me.” Five frowned at her in askance, not getting what she meant until she clarified, “Segregation, remember?”

“Oh. 1963, right.” He’d forgotten when they were for a moment and what that entailed, which was embarrassing and had obviously annoyed Allison. He ground his palm between his eyes, trying to tame by force of will the pounding pain behind his forehead. “Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat, “They must have landed within a perimeter of a few years. If they had a lick of sense—which I know is probably too much to ask—they will have stuck around and we should be able to find them. I propose we go back to the alley and—”

He was interrupted by the _click_ of the front door opening. Allison jumped off the couch and Five drew back toward her, eyes scanning the room for anything he could use as a weapon—a poker by the chimney, a baseball bat against the jamb of the living room’s opening, both out of reach to either of them, a problem since Five’s warping seemed to be unreliable at the moment—

“Anyone in?”

This was just Raymond, stepping into the living room from the hallway. The adrenaline that had started to pump in Five’s veins in anticipation of a fight, left with no outlet, made his limbs tingle as it receded.

“Ray?” Allison said, stunned, before she crossed the space between her and her husband in a few strides and jumped in his arms. “What are you— _how_ —I went to the police station but they wouldn’t let me see you, and I thought for sure that you would—”

“It’s quite the extraordinary story,” Raymond said, cupping the back of his wife’s head with one hand while his other arm wrapped itself around her waist. “I met a rather… _unique_ character, a white boy who quoted Shakespeare—badly—and kept making weird asides to himself. Honestly, I don’t know if he was under the influence or just not all there, but the most interesting part is that as we talked it appeared that he might be… my brother-in-law.”

Allison pulled away from her husband’s embrace to share a look with Five. “Klaus,” they said in unison.

“That’s the name he gave me, yes,” Raymond said. 

He wandered toward the alcohol cabinet, got the whiskey bottle out, looked at the low level of whiskey inside and then back at Five, who shrugged minutely. Tactfully, Raymond didn’t comment on Five raiding his booze and poured himself a glass.

“Not that I’m surprised that _Klaus_ got himself arrested, but what relation does it have with you getting off early?” Allison asked.

“When he realized I was your husband, he said he wanted to get me out. I’m not sure how he managed it, but one hour later they were indeed letting me out, just like that. In fact, the officer told me to, I quote, ‘get the fuck out of here,’ and he looked pretty freaked out.”

“Where’s Klaus now?” Five asked after another look exchanged with Allison.

“When I left he was still in a cell, but he told me not to worry about him, that he had ‘friends in high places,’ and to tell you that he would be in touch soon.”

Was ‘friends in high places’ a euphemism for ghosts? Klaus must have used his ability to get Raymond out of jail. His powers had always been pretty passive, but there had been a moment at the Icarus theater when he’d made _Ben_ materialize. Was Ben here with Klaus? Five ruthlessly quelled the flicker of hope he felt at the thought. It could be Ben, or it could be any of the random ghosts that trailed after his brother; no need to set himself up for disappointment. In any case, they already had a lead on one of their siblings, which was a major step-up from a moment ago. 

“I guess it’s back to the police station, isn’t it?” Allison said.

“As curious as I am about who Klaus’ ‘friends’ would turn out to be, we don’t have any time to waste, so yes,” Five said, already marching across the living room. 

He stopped, turned on his heels and pointed his finger at his brother-in-law, who was sipping whiskey from his glass. “Good job, Raymond,” he said, with the thought that it could hurt nothing to make nice with the man, especially after the first impression he must have made yesterday.

“Uh, thanks?” Raymond said, dropping his glass about an inch from his mouth.

“We’ll be back soon, baby,” Allison said, grabbing her purse and coat.

Five had one last vision of Raymond’s eyebrows shooting up, his mouth opening on some reply, before he and Allison were off to bail out their brother. 

—-

“Who did you say you were looking for?”

The officer at the reception wasn’t the same as the one who’d driven Allison crazy this morning, but he could have been his carbon copy—maybe they bred them like cattle in one of the farms around Dallas. He had the same bored, disinterested disposition, same comprehension problems. His Texan accent was thicker, though, and his look of boredom was slowly edging into suspicion. 

“Klaus,” she hissed, her jaw clenched so tight it hurt, “Hargreeves.”

“And what’s your relation to him?”

Allison exhaled furiously through her nose. No doubt the policeman—Patton, according to his nametag—knew that Klaus was white, so he wouldn’t believe Allison was his sister. Or even if he did, he looked like he would be difficult for the sake of it. 

“He’s a friend,” Allison said. “Look, I just want to know if he’s still detained here or not. You tell me this one thing and I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Do I look like a goddamn tourist information center? Stop wasting my time and go look for your ‘friend’ elsewhere.” And then, very deliberately, he looked down at the folder he held in his arms, acting as though she wasn’t there at all. 

“Officer, please, I really need to know—”

“All right, asshole, I’m done being patient,” Five said, grabbing the edge of the wooden counter, presumably to hop over it.

Honestly, Allison was surprised he’d waited this long to say something. She’d felt him twitch by her side the whole time, gnashing his teeth and sighing loudly in irritation. For a second, Allison was tempted to let him have at Officer Patton, but good sense caught up with her and she grabbed her brother by the back of his shirt collar.

“Allison, let go!”

“I’m sorry, officer,” Allison said, struggling to keep Five from jerking out of her grip. “He’s a bit excitable. We’ll be going now. _Stop it, Five!_ ”

“Who’s that kid?” Officer Patton asked suspiciously. “Why is he with you?”

“I’m… babysitting him,” Allison said. Five stopped fighting to glower at her. If looks could kill, she’d have been dead and buried in less time it took to spell ‘fratricide’. “Yes, that’s right. I’m his babysitter.”

“You don’t really seem to have him under control. And shouldn’t he be at school right now? Who are his parents? Do they know you took him to the police station? What’s your name, boy?”

“Really sorry to have bothered you,” Allison said brightly. “I see that you have a lot of work so we’ll just leave you to it.”

She put a hand on Five’s shoulder, digging her nails into the meat of it to signal him that they should be moving. Fortunately, he seemed to have realized that the situation had slipped out of their control—Allison wasn’t stupid enough to think she’d intimidated him into compliance—and he let go of the counter with a huff, shrugging off her hand and striding toward the exit, his legs swallowing the black and white squares on the checkered floor. Allison trailed after him; his legs might be shorter than hers, but the power of his rage made him move fast enough that she had to hurry her steps to catch up with him. She walked by a short, balding bespectacled man, who opened his mouth when she brushed past him. Something about that man bugged her, but she was too busy trying not to lose her brother to focus on it.

“Five, wait!” she called as he hurtled down the front steps of the Dallas police station. “Jesus Christ, will you slow down?”

Five reached the bottom of the stairs and deigned stopping there to wait for her. He was squinting at the sunlight, something she’d noticed already when they were making their way to the police station. He must have a headache, which probably did nothing for his mood. Asking him about it would only make him work harder at pretending he was fine. He’d already been like this as a kid, striving to prove he didn’t need anyone’s help—and then life had brutally, cruelly made it so he had to get used to never having anyone’s help, doing little to improve his natural disposition. So Allison wouldn’t comment on his headache, but she made a mental note to keep an eye on him. Something felt off, but she couldn’t put her finger on what.

“It’s one thing if you don’t want to use your power,” he said irritably, shoving his hands in his pockets, “but you should have let me work him over. He wouldn’t have kept looking so smug for very long.”

“I told you already: we _live_ here. Maybe you’re used to popping in and out of timelines, but I’ve made a life here.”

“But you’ll be gone once we find the others. Won’t you?”

She stood on the last step, so much taller than him that he had to crane his neck to look up at her. She pinched her mouth, stepping down to join him. “Of course, I’ll go back with you,” she said, pitching her voice low so only he could hear her. “I want to see my daughter again. But Ray will still live here after we’re gone and I don’t want to cause problems for him.”

Five’s shoulders dropped as he sighed, looking away. “Coffee, then, before I murder someone who might not deserve it.”

“It isn’t going to be that simple with me being black and you being white.” He looked aghast at the prospect that they might not be able to procure him coffee and she amended, “There’s a place where we could get you coffee. My workplace—it’s a beauty parlor, but the owner is a friend and she won’t refuse us a cup of coffee.”

“Excellent. Let’s go.”

“Um, excuse me?”

Allison and Five spun around as one person, in time to see the small man Allison had noticed at the police station trot down the stairs. He held a hand out to them, as though wanting to physically stop them from leaving, and Allison realized what had caught her attention: the man’s palm was tattooed with the word ‘hello’ in the exact same lettering as Klaus’ tattoo.

“Where did you get that?” Allison asked, pointing her finger at the man’s hand.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Five said, noticing the tattoo in his turn.

“All the children of the prophet have it,” the man said cheerfully, turning his palm to show them the ‘goodbye’ on his other hand. “I couldn’t help but overhear you, at the police station. I heard that you were looking for the prophet.”

“The _prophet_ ,” Five said with a snort, throwing his head back. “Oh my god.”

Allison shushed him. “You mean Klaus Hargreeves?” she asked the man for confirmation.

“Yes, that’s him! Very few people dare use the prophet’s name.” It was very gentle, but Allison could detect a hint of reproach in his voice. “I heard the way that policeman back there was talking to you. Shameful. But the prophet accepts people of all colors and—” He glanced uncertainly at Five. “—ages, I suppose.”

“Mighty tolerant of him,” Five said, grinning sharply.

“His message is one of love, and peace, and—”

“All right, all right, save the pitch sale,” Allison interrupted him with a slashing motion of her hand. “We’re convinced already. Is the… ‘prophet’ still in there?” 

She waved toward the entrance of the police station. It was tacky and pompous, with carved eagles bursting out of the façade, tall arched windows and a heavy studded door. She’d hated every minute she had to spend inside this morning, but she would get back in and drag Klaus out by the scruff of his neck if she needed to.

“No, no,” said the man, shaking his head and his hands at the same time, eager to clear the misunderstanding, “he’s left already—an hour ago, maybe? That’s what I meant to tell you: he’s left, but I can direct you to a place where you’ll find him.”

“Well,” Allison said with a tight-lipped smile, “you should have opened with that.”

The address the man gave her was of a villa in North Dallas, which told Allison a lot about how Klaus had occupied his time for however long he’d spent in the sixties. She hoped he’d managed to stay away from the drugs, since it’d looked like he was trying to stop before the world blew up to hell in 2019; in any case, he hadn’t been able to stay away from the scamming, though she didn’t think he’d ever attempted the cult angle before. This era probably had a lot more opportunities to offer to someone like him than to someone like _her_ , though she was satisfied of where she’d ended up and had no interest in becoming a cult leader.

“Thank you,” she said to the man—Klaus’ follower, apparently, and wasn’t that a notion to consider. The man didn’t move, still smiling at her, as though he was expecting something. “Thank you very much,” Allison added pointedly, hoping he’d take the hint. “You’ve been a great help.”

“I’m curious,” he said, “how have you heard of the prophet? Have you attended one of his speeches? Or maybe, by any chance, did you find one of the pamphlets that I—”

“We’re his family,” Five cut in. “Now get the hell out of here before I stop resisting the urge to punch you in the face.”

The man blinked at Five, probably wondering whether to be amused or frightened at being threatened by a boy in shorts. Then, either because he correctly interpreted the unwavering menace in Five’s expression, or because he remembered witnessing Five about to assault a police officer and had calculated the amount of unhinged you needed to be to try that, he scampered off like a rabbit, throwing befuddled looks over his shoulder.

“Did you _have_ to?” Allison said, quite hypocritically because she’d been tempted to say something similar. “Is there, like, a quota of threatened people you need to reach in a day?”

He cast her an unamused look. “It’s ten people a day and I’m lagging behind today. Come on, let’s go.”

Once again, she had to hurry after him. He marched purposefully, but she had no idea where he thought he was going. Of course, he’d been to the city before, so maybe he knew his way around though she doubted he did as well as her, who’d been living here for two years.

“Are we getting Klaus right now?” she asked. “He told Ray he would be in touch with us, the jerk.”

Five stopped in the middle of the busy sidewalk so abruptly that a middle-aged lady wearing a pink suit almost bumped into him. She made little indignant noises that Five ignored until she took off, scowling. 

“If I see Klaus before I get a cup of coffee,” Five said, pressing the pad of his thumb between his eyes, “I might strangle him and then mildly regret it later. You promised me coffee. Where is it?” He addressed her a look that she interpreted as him silently admitting that he didn’t know where he was going.

“Let’s go to Odessa’s, then,” Allison said. “This isn’t the right way at all.”

They had to take the bus to get to the right part of town. The two of them made a strange pair, that much was obvious in the way both white and black people looked at them, at the whispers from the passengers on the bus. Five hunkered down in his seat, crossed his arms and closed his eyes, ignoring everything around him. Allison didn’t know whether it was genuine obliviousness or defiance. At Odessa’s, Allison opened the front door and was welcomed by a chorus of greetings and worried questions about Ray—the story of Ray’s plight must have gone around their group already—that quieted as soon as the girls, employees and clients alike, saw Five come in behind Allison. 

“I’m sorry,” Odessa said with her polished, customer-format smile, “but I think you got the wrong place, kid.”

“No, he’s with me,” Allison rushed to say before Five could respond with his usual tact and poise. “I’m sorry, there wasn’t anywhere else I could bring him.”

“All right,” Odessa said, blinking. “But who—”

Odessa was too close a friend to buy the babysitter excuse, and also Allison knew she’d already used up the number of exactly one time she could pull this off with Five; but then it occurred to her that since Odessa _was_ her friend, maybe simply telling the truth was what she should do.

“He’s my brother,” Allison said. 

Stunned silence followed that announcement. It was a slow day for the beauty parlor, as there was only one woman at the hoods, reading a magazine that she’d let drop on her lap. Delonda was alone at her table, apparently in the process of arranging her many colorful nail polish bottles. Alara and Susanna each had a client and were holding scissors and hair straighteners up in the air, as though a magic spell had caught them and frozen them mid-gesture. 

“Okay,” Odessa said, then added, “Sure,” in a voice that sounded like she didn’t believe Allison but thought she was saying this for a reason that wasn’t to be discussed now. “But Allison, honey, you didn’t have to come today, not with what happened to Ray. Did you manage to talk to him?”

“He’s back home already,” Allison said. She pointed to Five one of the chairs in the waiting area by the windows and he sat there like a docile child; damn, he must be _really_ off his game to be this compliant. “They let him go a couple of hours ago.”

“What, really?” Odessa looked perturbed, but she covered for it smoothly. “This is great news, truly, but all the more reason for you to go back home. We’ll meet up later for our…” She glanced at Five, who didn’t seem to be listening, hand thrown over his eyes.“…afterwork gathering.”

“I will go home, but can we get a cup of coffee first?”

“Sure thing, I just made a pot. You certainly deserve a cup.” 

Odessa pattered to the back of the shop, separated from the rest by two latticed half screens. Allison followed her there. The usual salon chatter reprised behind her as Susanna and Alara got to work again, conversing lightly with their clients, but it was all a little more subdued than usual, everyone starkly aware of Five’s sore-thumb presence. Not that it was enough to visibly bother Five, who ignored them all with aplomb.

“No sugar,” Allison said, seeing Odessa look for the sugar tin box in the cupboard under the sink. “It’s not for me.”

Odessa leaned aside to be able to look around Allison at Five, who gave all appearances of being asleep, though Allison strongly doubted he was. “Who’s that kid, Allison? Are we about to fend off angry white parents? I mean, I’m not heartless, if he needs help of course I—”

“I told you,” Allison said. “He’s my brother. I swear he really is. Our parents are… dead.” As of 1963, Reginald Hargreeves was probably kicking somewhere, but he also wouldn’t know to look for them. “No one will come for him. You can relax.”

Odessa’s eyes searched her face, as though trying to detect whether Allison was obfuscating the truth. “If you’re in trouble, you know you can count on me.”

“Of course I do.” Allison offered her friend her most reassuring smile and took the cup of coffee she’d poured from her hands. “Thank you for the coffee. I’ll give it to him.”

“The coffee is for him?”

“Yeah, he’s got a bit of an unfortunate addiction.”

As soon as she got closer to him, Five’s deceptively relaxed posture straightened and he took his hand off his eyes, confirming Allison’s idea that he had never been sleeping or unaware of his surroundings. He took the cup she held out to him without a word and drank a sip, closing his eyes again in bliss and smacking his lips. She sat on the chair next to his, under the suspended spider plant.

“Not terrible,” he offered, which was all the thanks Allison figured she would get. 

“How bad is it?”

“What do you mean? The world’s general situation or just our family’s? Though I have no definite answer for either.”

“Your headache.”

He spared her a glance, obviously annoyed that he had to split his attention from his cup of coffee. “I fail to see how it’s relevant to our current predicament,” he said.

Not denying it, then. “If you need more rest, then we can go back home for a few hours and leave Klaus to his flock for a little longer.”

“Tempting as this is,” Five said, snorting softly in his cup, “I feel like if we keep leaving him to his own devices, he might become President of the U.S. or something, and I don’t think I’m ready to live in that particular new timeline.”

Allison huffed a laugh. “Yeah, I’m just trying to… picture it, and my mind comes blank. Klaus, a cult leader? I’m sure he must be hating it. He’s never been very good with responsibilities.”

“Oh, most likely. It’s the only thought that brings me comfort right now.”

Allison laughed again and they lapsed into a surprisingly comfortable silence. Five drank his coffee and Allison listened to the familiar noises of the salon around her, the chipper conversations, the scissors clicking, the hum of a song on the radio. Back in the days of their childhood, she and Five had been able to go back and forth for a while like this, sometimes snipping at each other, but just as often aiming their sharp wits at their siblings. This felt… nostalgic. It was strange, to feel nostalgia for such a fraught period of her life, but at the same time things had been so much simpler back then. This must be what Luther felt like all the time.

“I’m sorry,” Five murmured, so quietly that Allison thought at first that he was talking to himself.

“What, are you talking to me? What exactly are you sorry for? Is it about attacking my husband, making a scene at the police station, not thanking me for the coffee…?”

“I’m being serious,” he said snappishly. Rather than looking at her he was frowning at the potted plant next to him, which sobered Allison. He _was_ being worryingly serious. “I’m sorry for… stranding you here,” he said, looking uncomfortable but soldiering on. “I’m sorry about the others as well, but you most of all. I didn’t _choose_ this era, not consciously at least… It’s bad luck, is what it is, but it’s still because of me. It must have been hard on you. And you were mute, and alone, and I’m… I’m sorry, that’s all.”

Allison opened her mouth, but she wasn’t sure what to say. So he wasn’t oblivious to the racial dynamics around them, after all. She didn’t think she’d ever heard him apologize unless Mom made him, and it certainly had never sounded this heartfelt. He buried his nose in his coffee cup, elbows on his thighs, the tendons in his neck pulled taut. She’d felt nostalgic a moment ago at the way they’d been badmouthing Klaus in tandem, but responding to an apology from him was uncharted territory. She should tread carefully, though it wasn’t that easy—he was almost like a stranger, but not quite, because she cared about him in a way she wouldn’t care about a stranger.

“It wasn’t all bad,” she said.

“Please don’t patronize me, Allison. Save it for our idiot brothers.”

“I’m not saying I didn’t have a hard time.” She spoke in a low voice, all too aware that the women around them might seem engrossed in their tasks but were still within earshot. “But I made good friends here—” She tilted her chin at Odessa and the girls. “—I met Ray, and I found purpose with the movement. Even if this is just a parenthesis in my life, these two years have felt… more real than most things before. So I’m not thanking you for stranding me here or anything, but I can’t forget that if you hadn’t done anything, I’d be dead. We all would be.”

His tired eyes finally met hers. “All right,” he said. He put down his cup on the low glass table in front of him. “Now that this talk is out of the way, we may go rescue our brother from his horde of worshippers.”

He was already up and at the door before Allison had the time to stand up. If he didn’t meet a bloody end, all the nervous energy that kept him fired up would certainly kill him one day.

“Off we go, then,” Allison said under her breath. Then in a louder voice, “Thank you for the coffee, Odessa!”

—-

Vanya was waking up. It was a slow progression, like crawling up a steep slope, then out of a tunnel, seeing a small dot of light at the end of it but feeling like it never got any closer. She was aware of the mattress under her, of daylight pressing behind her eyelids, of a persisting _tap-tap-tap_ somewhere close. It took her forever to be able to move a finger, even longer for her eyelids to tremble. Dimly, it occurred to her that it wasn’t exactly normal for her to have such a hard time waking up, but the lethargy that enveloped her slowed her thoughts to a trickle.

She finally managed to open her eyes. She was lying on a bed, over the blankets, dressed in her day clothes. She still had her shoes on, a detail that captured her attention for a long time. That wasn’t normal; she wouldn’t go to bed with her shoes still on. 

_Tap, tap, tap._

Vanya looked up. A bird was knocking at the windowpane with its beak, as though asking permission to get in. She felt herself smile at the sight, until something hit her: there was no curtain at the window. The window of her room at Sissy’s farm had curtains. Her pulse picking up, Vanya looked around her, at the narrow bed, the white walls, at the carpeted floor, at the picture of a lighthouse in a stormy sea hanging on the opposite wall. She wasn’t at Sissy’s anymore. She had no idea where she was at all.


	4. Chapter 4

The house where Klaus supposedly hosted his cult was an ostentatious mansion of Greek Revival style, with colonnades and a triangular front, maybe an old plantation home. There were people milling about everywhere, all dressed in blue pajama-like uniforms, some of them wearing flower necklaces—and as Klaus’ braindead worshipper had said, they were indeed of various races, somewhat of an odd sight after walking the streets of Dallas.

“I’ll be damned,” Allison said, eyes going back and forth trying to take in the massive house and the uniformed people at the same time. “This is really a cult.”

“There are rather more people than I expected,” Five said. “Not a good sign for humanity.”

“Let me do the talking, all right?” Allison said. “If they can tell us where Klaus is, it’s probably better not to antagonize them.”

Five wondered if he should be offended, then decided it was a waste of his admittedly too low energy. Allison was right, she was better at handling people than he was, and he didn’t particularly want to scare them. It wasn’t their fault, he supposed, if they were stupid enough to fall for his brother’s bullshit; some people were just born at a disadvantage. They all looked very friendly. Though they’d now caught sight of Five and Allison, there was no wariness in their demeanor, and a flock of five or six, both male and female, were making their way toward them with broad smiles on their faces. Five couldn’t remember anyone looking this happy to see him in… ever, really. It was unnerving.

“Hello,” said one of them, a big black man whose shoulders strained the blue uniform. “Welcome! Can we be of any help?”

“Yes, actually,” Allison said with a practiced smile. “We’re looking for Klaus—for your prophet. Is he here?”

If anything, the people’s smiles got even wider, and more were converging toward Five and Allison, drawn by the conversation. Five casually got his hands out of his pockets, readying himself in case they got into a tussle; he hadn’t tried jumping since this morning, but he hoped the boost from the coffee he drank and the little rest he got at the beauty parlor would be enough.

“Not right now,” the man who’d first spoken said, “but you’re more than welcome to wait here for his return.”

“He was at the police station this morning,” Allison said. “Has he been back at all?”

“I haven’t seen him,” said a plump East Asian woman. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen him since we’ve been back.”

“Since you’ve been back?” Five said. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, we followed the prophet to California as he spread his message there,” the woman said. “We were in San Francisco but we came back… well, just yesterday. The prophet led the way, but he wasn’t at the house when we arrived. He goes off on his own, sometimes.” The woman leaned in and added in a conspiratorial whisper, “That’s how he experiences the world.”

“Right,” Five said. That did sound like Klaus. He’d ‘experienced the world’ by wandering away as a child too. “So let me get this straight: none of you have seen your prophet in Dallas recently. How can you be sure he'll come here?”

The smiles were dimming and an uncertain whisper rippled across the group. “Well,” said another woman, “where else would he go?”

“I’m sure he’ll be back soon,” Allison said, sounding so convincing that Five wondered for a moment if she hadn’t found a way to use her ability without her trigger phrase. “And when he does, can you please tell him that Allison and Five stopped by? He’ll know who we are. He should have my address, but to be safe just give him this.”

Allison took a notepad and a pen out of her purse, scribbled her address on the top page before tearing it and giving it to the woman who’d last spoken to them. They left after fending off eager invitations to share prayers for the prophet’s return with them. Fortunately, they’d asked the cab driver to wait at least ten minutes for them, so they just had to cram in the backseat again, getting the flimsy protection of car doors to separate them from Klaus’ offputtingly cheerful cult. 

“Where to now?” the driver asked, glancing at them in the rearview mirror.

“Good question,” Allison said, turning toward Five. “You meant to go back to the alley, right?”

“Yes, it’s where I would have gone if we hadn’t wasted our time with this detour. Maybe the others have been back there. Maybe someone has seen something.”

“Actually,” Allison said thoughtfully, “I think that on the night I landed there, someone took a picture of me. I saw a flash coming from a window of the building at the back of the alley.”

“Well, that’s a start. Do you know what that building is? An apartment complex?”

“No, it used to be an electronics store, Marty’s, but it’s been closed for a few years.”

“Interesting,” Five said, before leaning between the front seats and telling the driver to take them there.

As the car drove down the alley leading them out of the property, Allison said, “I guess Klaus’ attention must have been caught by something shiny, but I’m sure he’ll end up contacting us.”

“You have more faith in him than I do,” Five said. 

“It’s not about faith, but you don’t know what it was like to land here and not know whether you were the last one left alive. Klaus will want to see us, trust me.”

Allison's words were a sucker punch in the gut. “Right,” Five said, his voice tight and his lips curling over his teeth, “how could I even begin to imagine what that’s like?”

His sister’s eyes grew wide as she realized what she’d said. “God, that’s not what I… Five, I’m sor—”

“It’s fine,” he interrupted her apology, because it _was_ his fault if she and the others had to go through this. “Whatever.”

He angled himself away, presenting to her the back of his shoulder, crossing his arms and leaning his aching forehead against the cool glass. He looked through the window at the row of luxurious villas unraveling, wondering what it had looked like during the apocalypse. And then, just like that, the images formed in front of his eyes, the dirty opaque sky, the priceless houses reduced to rubbles, the scorched lawns. Five wrapped his arms more tightly around himself, wanting to close his eyes but too morbidly fascinated by the change to look away. He knew this wasn’t real, of course he did—seeing something and it being real were two vastly different things. This was 1963 and the apocalypse was decades away. It was merely one of his brain’s dirty tricks, so he should treat it like a particularly realistic movie. No ash falling from the sky, huh. That was unusual, because the ash was always such a feature in his flashbacks. Though a little variety couldn’t hurt, of course. 

“Five.” This was Allison’s voice, speaking in an annoyed tone of voice that told Five she must have called him several times already. “Five, will you say something?”

“What do you want me to say?” he said. 

Looking back out of the window, he saw that the scene of devastation had vanished, bright sunshine pouring over pristine houses once again. Five felt the tension in his shoulders ease a little.

“Stop sulking, okay? I’m sorry about what I said. It slipped my mind—that’s not an excuse, I know it isn’t, but it’s just that… this apocalypse doesn’t feel quite real to me, sometimes.”

“I’m not sulking,” Five said, glancing outside again. A gardener wearing a flopping white hat was cutting a bush of hydrangea with a large pair of sheathes. A living person was a good sign, a proof that the world kept on going. “I was just thinking. If someone took a picture of you when you arrived, they might have been expecting you. It seems odd otherwise that they just so happened to be at their window with a camera.”

“And if they were expecting me, it must be because they’ve seen the others,” Allison completed for him.

“Exactly,” Five said, relieved to see that she’d renounced pursuing the previous topic. “At the very least, we could learn when they arrived, which will tell us how likely it is that they’re still around.”

Marty’s still had TVs and radios exposed behind the windows, but the inside of the store looked dark and silent at a quick glance; the blinds were down behind the glass door and a sign reading ‘closed’ hung on it. Allison insisted on knocking, saying that they shouldn’t freak out the owner if they wanted him to cooperate. Five was of the opinion that they _should_ freak him out if they wanted him cooperative, and he shared it with his sister on principle, but was privately relieved when she held her ground. He had to admit that thinking about using his power at the moment bothered him more than he would say out loud to Allison. He never botched a jump unless something was happening at the landing spot that made it uncertain ground. Even when he was exhausted, the worst that happened was that his powers fizzled out. He wasn’t sure what was off, but he could feel it as a hitch deep in his chest, like something chafing, something broken and jiggling loose. But they had other things to worry about, so he should just hold back from jumping as much as possible for now. 

It took a whole lot of persistent knocking on Allison’s part until they heard footsteps come up from behind the door. “We’re closed!” shouted a quaky male voice. 

“We don’t want a TV,” replied Allison. “We want to ask you some questions.”

“Just go away!”

“We want to talk to you about the people who landed in the alley behind your store.”

There was a shuffling sound, then two of the blades from the blinds obscuring the glass door were bent, revealing an anxious blue eye. A gargled gasp followed and the door finally opened an inch, letting them see a sliver of a middle-aged white man’s face.

“You,” he said in a breath to Allison. His eyes swerved to look at Five. “And you! Yesterday evening, you dropped from the—”

“Since introductions have been made already, you should let us in so we can talk,” Five cut him off.

“What—what do you want with me?” the man asked in a trembling voice. “Are you with the CIA, or NASA, or—”

“Do we look like we’re from a government agency?” Five said, rolling his eyes. “Seriously, look at us.”

“But—but appearances are deceiving,” the man said. That was true, and Five conceded the point with a purse of the lips. Then the man added, “You’re aliens, so you can make yourself look like anybody!”

“We’re— _what?_ ” Allison said incredulously. “Aliens? What crazy talk is that?”

“Well, how do you explain—” The man’s nervous eyes looked behind Five and Allison, maybe checking for eavesdroppers, and he finished in whisper, “—how you materialized from the sky in a surge of energy?”

“If you open the door and let us in, we’ll be more than happy to explain it to you,” Five said, giving him his best smile.

If Allison’s glare was any indication, his best smile wasn’t all that great. “We don’t want you any harm, sir,” she said with a smile of her own. “We just want you to tell us what you saw. You didn’t just see us, right? You witnessed other arrivals in the alley.”

“I might have,” the man offered, clearly torn between wariness and curiosity.

“Those people are our family and we don’t know where they are now. So it’s very important that you tell us everything you know. Please.”

The man inside Marty’s made the mistake of locking eyes with Allison’s pleading ones. Five, who’d been getting ready to kick the door down, watched as the man’s mistrustful expression melted until he sighed and opened the door wider to usher them in. “Quick,” he said, as though he were afraid unwanted visitors would rush in with them. “Were you followed?”

The wide space of the store’s first floor was framed by two staircases that ran along the two opposite walls and up to a mezzanine floor. TV sets were arranged all over the store, their blank screens like as many blind eyes, and it would have looked like the store were still open for business if not for the fine layer of dust on everything.

“Followed by who?” Five’s footsteps echoed as he walked around, hands in his pockets.

“I—I don’t know. The government, I guess?”

“I thought _we_ were the government,” Five said, giving the man an amused glance. “This is a nice store you have here. Why close it?”

“Because of—who _are_ you? What do you want from me?”

“From you? Just the answer to a few questions.”

“My name is Allison Chestnut,” Allison said, presenting to the man a hand that he took hesitantly. “And this is my brother Five. What’s your name?”

“My name is Elliott—hey, hey, don’t go there!”

Five had climbed the first steps on one of the staircases and stopped. “Why?” he asked. “What’s up there? What don’t you want us to see?”

“You said you would answer our questions,” Allison told Elliott reproachfully.

“I didn’t say—”

“Why let us in if you weren’t willing to tell us anything?”

“Well, I mean…” A surge of courage ran through Elliott like a spasm and he straightened, sticking out his chest. “No! You… you answer my questions first. If you’re not aliens then who are you? What are you planning? Is the government in on it? Why behind my store?”

“All right,” Five said, stepping down the stairs. “We’re time-travelers—well, to be specific, I’m the one with the ability to bend time and space, and the others are my brothers and sisters that I took from 2019 right as the world was being blown away, so I could at least save their lives despite having failed to save the rest of the world. Unfortunately, I overreached myself and scattered my family across the timeline. We’re not planning anything, my sister and I just want to reunite with the rest of our family and prevent the apocalypse from happening again—or still, depending on your point of view. We have no tie to the government. And there’s no particular reason why we landed behind your store, it just happened that way. Questions? Comments?”

Five waited, with what he thought was infinite patience he should be commended for, until Elliott’s half-open mouth was finally operational enough that it formed words again.

“I—you—” Elliott stammered. “Time-travel? 2019? _The end of the world_?”

“Is that so much harder to believe than aliens?” Allison asked.

“Well, there are recorded instances of alien encoun—”

“And now you’ve met time-travelers,” Five said. “Congratulations. I answered your questions, so you now have to answer mine: how many ‘arrivals’ did you witness? When were they?”

“Four other than you two. Six total. I, I can show you upstairs. I took pictures.”

Five let Elliott lead the way up to the mezzanine. The upstairs had been set half as a living room, with a couch, armchairs and a coffee table—as well as, incongruously, a dentist chair—and half as a working room of some sort. Various measuring devices crowded the space, screens and buttons and antennas everywhere. The walls were covered with taped newspaper articles and photos. A large blackboard, with a magnifying glass mounted on a stand placed in front of it, had grainy bluish pictures arranged in columns. It gave Five an odd feeling to be looking at this place, a sort of detachment, as though he were watching himself explore the mezzanine with a split-second gap, already knowing what he would see before he set eyes on it. 

_You built those, right?_

Five shook himself and zeroed in on the grainy pictures. He recognized Allison, sprawled on her back, then her anxious face looking almost right at the lens, Luther’s hulking form lying on a pile of garbage, Diego standing at the entrance of the alley, Vanya in her white suit. His siblings all looked lost, confused, terribly alone—and he’d done this to them, had let them be spat out from the sky far away from everything they’d ever known, on their own, with no way to go back.

Distantly, he could hear that Elliott was talking, “I couldn’t take a picture of the first one because—well, I wasn’t expecting this, it was the first time—but he arrived in February 1960. He was a white man, late twenties, early thirties. He had a goatee and wore, like, a sleeveless jacket.”

“Klaus,” Allison said. “When were the last arrivals?”

“There were two this year, actually—one was in September and the other one mid-October.”

“This was just a month ago,” Allison said excitedly. “That’s Vanya, right? Hear that, Five? Vanya at least must still be around; maybe Diego too. Five? Are you listening?”

“I’m listening, yes. A month ago, that’s great.”

“You don’t look very happy,” Allison said, examining him critically. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” Five made a circling finger motion around his face. “This is my happy face. Elliott, did you see any of them again?”

“They all came back to the alley a few times. Like you did,” he told Allison. “But I have found a couple of things that might interest you. I happened to read an article and the picture looked… let me show you.” Elliott fumbled in a drawer for a cut-out newspaper article with a mugshot on it—Five got closer to have a look and saw Diego looking back at him. “This looks like Number Four, right?” Elliott said. He sounded eager, having moved on from his earlier fear and mistrust right into excitement.

“Number Four?” Allison said.

“Yes, Arrival Number Four.”

“Ha!” Allison let out an inelegant cackle. “Diego would _looove_ to hear himself be referred to as ‘Number Four’. What does the article say?” she asked Five, who had taken the paper from Elliott’s hands and started reading silently.

“Oh, this is illuminating,” Five said. “Listen to this: ‘Disturbed man with multiples knives arrested outside 1026 N. Beckley.’”

“Is that—”

“Yep.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. Is he serious?” Allison sighed loudly and closed her eyes, pressing two fingers against her forehead. “What am I saying? This is Diego we’re talking about.”

“At least we know where he is and he’s unlikely to have wandered away, contrary to _another_ of our brothers.”

“So this was helpful, was it,” Elliott said. With his wide-eyed expression and the hair flopping on his forehead, he looked like a puppy begging for a treat. How much of his life had he focused on the mystery of Five’s siblings landing in his back alley? Not that Five didn’t understand obsession, but at least his obsession involved his own family and the fate of the entire world. 

“Very helpful,” Five said in earnest. He folded the newspaper article and slipped it inside his shorts’ pocket. “You have no idea how helpful. What’s the other thing?”

“This is more, like, um, a rumor. In the last year, the Carousel Club on Commerce has acquired a bouncer who is, uh, really massive, or so I heard. So I thought—”

“Luther,” Allison said softly.

“If Arrival Number Three’s name is Luther, then yes, that’s who I thought it might be. I haven’t gone and checked myself, though, because I, uh, don’t go out all that often.”

“The Carousel Club?” Five said. “Isn’t it Jack Ruby’s club? Well, if it’s really Luther, then he didn’t waste any time getting under the wing of another shady older man.”

“Don’t start,” Allison told him sharply, before giving Elliott a warm smile. “Thank you so much. You’ve been a great help.”

He and Allison left Elliott’s store buoyed by a new sense of optimism. Things were starting to fall into place: Klaus would eventually wander back to them, since he had Allison’s address, they knew where Diego was and maybe Luther too, and Vanya would probably not be too hard to find since she’d arrived the most recently. Even Five’s headache, which hadn’t let up since he’d awoken this morning, felt more bearable now that he’d regained some confidence about his ability to quickly regroup his scattered family. Thank god for conspiracy theorists.

“Do you think that—” Allison said hesitantly as they walked down the street toward a bus stop. “—that Vanya will want to come with us?”

“Well, she must have calmed down somewhat, since the city hasn’t been leveled in a shockwave in the month she’s been there,” Five said.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Allison flinch. “That doesn’t mean she’ll want to see us,” she said tightly.

“We’ll have to find a way to convince her, then. None of us can stay here.”

He didn’t bother laying out the arguments for Allison—the possible damage to the timeline, the likeliness of the Commission trying to eliminate them for it—because he assumed that she was smart enough to think of them on her own. There was something else troubling him, though, a half-thought buried in the hole in his memory. If he couldn’t find his siblings and get them back to 2019, something terrible would happen. He had no clue what, didn’t know how to explain the sense of stomach-churning urgency he felt. 

“What’s the matter?”

The sound of Allison’s voice almost had Five visibly startle. “Well, things are actually looking up,” he said, “which, you know, has a way of making me expect for another shoe to drop.”

“Are you worried about the things you don’t remember? The time you’ve lost between 2019 and yesterday?”

Now was an uncomfortably perceptive remark. Five gave his sister a sharp look, which she returned with a challenging one of her own. “Let’s find Diego,” he said. “I’ll feel better once we have our hands on at least _one_ of our siblings.”

“Yeah, me too.” With a snort, Allison added, “Also, then we’ll be able to make fun of Diego for getting arrested trying to save fucking _JFK_. What do you think his idea was? That he would kill Lee Harvey Oswald and drive all the way back home to tell _Dad_ about it?”

“Something like that, probably,” Five said, feeling himself smile a bit at the thought. Only Diego, really.

“I can only imagine how Dad would have reacted to this random, thirty-something guy he’s never seen showing up and saying—” There, Allison deepened her voice and aggressively jabbed her finger in the air in a pretty on-point imitation of their brother. “‘Fuck you, Dad! You don’t know who I am but _I_ saved the president and you can’t take that away from me!’”

Five had felt it bubble in his throat since Allison had begun her impersonation, but then she started laughing at her own joke and he couldn’t help letting escape a short, dry sound more akin to a cough, but which was the closest he’d come to laughing in years. 

“So you _do_ laugh,” Allison said, looking amused.

“Yeah, shut up,” Five said, feeling his cheeks heat up. “I bet I won’t be laughing as much once we find Diego and have to stop his hero complex from doing damaging changes to the timeline.”

—-

They didn’t find Diego. Allison waited half-an-hour for Five across the street from the sprawling complex of low buildings forming the mental hospital Diego had supposedly been sent to. Instead of casually blinking away the way he normally would, Five walked to a copse of trees to do it, which was so out of character it pinged an alarm in Allison’s mind. He emerged from the same place half-an-hour later, his face a sickly shade of white but with a thunderous power to his steps. 

“Did you find—” Allison started, though the look on his face didn’t make her optimistic. 

“You have the right to punch me in the face, because I fucking jinxed us when I said he couldn’t have wandered away,” Five raged.

“What? Did they transfer him? Where is—”

“He fucking _escaped_.” With a growl of frustration, Five turned away and kicked a trashcan, causing a small dog who was being walked by an indolent-looking young man to yelp in distress. “Our genius brother chose _last night_ to implement his grand escape plan. He shaved off the bars at the window of his room and gave them the slip.”

“How do you know that? Who told you?”

“It’s all everyone would talk about. The _one_ time Diego does something right and it’s this.” Five was pacing the length of the sidewalk now, balled-up fists shoved in his pockets. “This is a fool’s errand. Why am I even trying? I bet Luther isn’t at the Carousel Club anymore, or never was in the first place. We won’t ever find the others and we’re _all_ going to die.”

“Wow, wow, wait a minute,” Allison said. Looking at her brother pace made her dizzy. “Five, stop. What was that again? Why would we all die? Are you hiding something again?”

Five stopped in his pacing, though he didn’t turn toward her. His shoulders were so tense that it looked like they must hurt, and Allison forced herself not to press him for answers, taking instead a leaf out of Ray’s book and patiently waiting for her brother to speak his mind. 

Amazingly, it worked. “I told you everything I know,” he said. “But I have a bad feeling about this. And even if I didn’t, we can’t stay here. The longer we do, the more damage we’ll do to the timeline. It worries me that we’ve heard nothing of the Commission. They haven’t targeted you, have they?”

“I don’t recall any assassins, no. Are you sure they’ll come after us? Maybe they’ve decided to leave us be, or they don’t know where—well, when—we are.”

This time Five deigned look at her, though it was to cast her a look that clearly meant to convey how stupid what she’d said was. “The whole purpose of the Commission is to protect the timeline. What could be more damaging to it than people time-traveling? As to them not knowing where we are, if a middling Texan business owner has been keeping track of us from his bedroom’s window, how likely do you think it is that the _Commission_ didn’t notice us popping out every couple of years?”

“Okay, fine.” Allison wasn’t sure she got exactly what the Commission’s deal was—what the hell did ‘protect the timeline’ mean?—but she didn’t want to set off Five again. “The Carousel Club won’t be open yet, so let’s go home first. I want to see Ray and it’s time for lunch. I bet you didn’t even have breakfast this morning.”

Five grumbled but didn’t deny it, and they made their way back home. Not wanting to get on the bus with Five again, Allison called them another cab. At the house, they found Ray sitting at the dinner table surrounded by newspapers. 

“Hey, you’re back,” he said in response to Allison calling his name. He went to her for a kiss, then nodded curtly at Five. “Any luck?”

“No,” Allison said with a sigh. “Klaus wasn’t at the police station anymore, and we got a lead on two of our other brothers, but it turned out that one was gone already. There’s one other place we have to check, but we can’t go yet.”

“I’ve got something that might cheer you up,” Ray said.

“Really?” She saw that Five had drifted away from them and was now unabashedly pouring himself a glass of whiskey. Holding back a sigh, she focused on her husband. “I could do with some cheering up. What is it?”

“I’ve been thinking on how I could help you find your siblings. It occurred to me that if you’ve all been split up, as you said, maybe the others have been trying to reach out to you too. So I’ve looked through old newspapers I hadn’t thrown away yet and… I think I found something interesting.”

He led her by the hand to the dinner table and drew the chair so she could sit on it. In front of her was a copy of the Dallas Morning News, open on a page with classified ads. One of them had been circled with a black ballpoint pen and Allison started reading it out loud for Five’s benefit, “‘Young woman with no memory of her past, late twenties, 5ft1, long straight brown hair, is looking for information about her family. Woke up in the alley between Commerce and Knox on October 12.’ Then there’s a number to call and an address. It looks like it’s a farm in West Dallas.”

“The alley is where you found Five,” Ray said, “and you said you had a sister, right?”

“Vanya,” Five said in a breath, the glass he’d been about to bring to his lips slowly lowering. “This has to be Vanya. So she doesn’t remember anything.”

His eyes met Allison’s and she knew they were thinking the same thing. If Vanya had lost her memories, then maybe she would let them approach her, unburdened by the resentment that had made her blow up the moon. But if Vanya didn’t remember anything, then how much should they tell her? How would they make her trust them enough that she would accept to leave with them?

“This is great, baby,” Allison said, amazed that Ray had put so much effort into helping them find their siblings—then she remembered with a cruel pang of guilt and grief that he didn’t know that once Five and her had found the others, they would need to leave. As far as Ray was concerned, he was helping the wife he would grow old with reunite with her family. 

“What’s wrong?” Ray asked, too perceptive as always. “You think it’s your sister, right?”

“Yes,” Allison said, forcing a smile. She cleared her throat. “It’s probably her. It’s just that we thought we would see two of our brothers today, so I hope we won’t be disappointed again.” 

Ray curled a hand around her shoulder. “You’ll find them. I’m sure your brother Klaus will come soon. He looked eager to see you.” Someone knocked on the front door and Allison felt the warmth of Ray’s hand leave her shoulder. “I’ll get that.”

Ray went away to answer the door and Five took his place, looking at the newspaper over her shoulder. “Do you think Vanya will believe us when we tell her everything?” Allison asked him in a low voice. At the door, she heard Ray ask, “Who are you? What—”

“I don’t think we should—” Five started to say, but he was interrupted by the characteristic dull sound of flesh hitting flesh, then a startled yelp of pain from Ray.

Allison twisted around on her chair and saw Ray stumble back from the entrance hall, a tall man wearing a black suit and a rabbit mask marching in. 

“Ray!” she shouted, jumping from her chair and rushing to grab her baseball bat. 

Another person in a suit and wearing a frog mask had followed the first man. As Rabbit Mask turned away from Ray, who’d fallen back on his behind, Allison swung the bat as hard as she could. Meanwhile, Five had grabbed the poker next to the chimney and he dashed at Frog Mask. Allison’s baseball didn’t connect with the large rabbit head, because her opponent caught it with his hand before it could. He gave the bat a hard tug, and when Allison felt that he was much stronger than her and would throw her out of balance if she held on, she let the bat go. Immediately, she closed her fist and threw a punch, aiming for the neck as she didn’t know what the mask was made of.

“Allison!” Ray shouted, but Allison didn’t have any attention to spare him. 

Her fist hit the neck of her attacker, who recoiled, making a soft strangled noise. At the corner of her eye, she could see Five grapple with the man in the frog mask—a small part of mind noted that she hadn’t seen the tell-tale blue light of Five’s power, which was worrying. Before she could wonder more about it, the man in the rabbit mask had recovered from her punch and flipped a switchblade open with his right hand, still holding the bat in his left one.

Cursing under her breath, Allison leaped back to avoid the swing of the man’s blade. Behind her attacker’s back, she saw something move, but only realized what it was when Ray’s face popped up as he jumped on the masked man’s back, looping an arm around the man’s neck.

“Ray, don’t!” Allison yelled.

She heard a muffled sound of pain from Five and resisted looking his way. Five could hold his own, but these were obviously Commission assassins and Ray would absolutely not stand a chance against them. The rabbit-masked man threw his elbow back into Ray’s side—Ray let go with a loud ‘ _oomph_ ’ and the masked man whirled around, hitting him with the bat so hard that Ray was thrown down on his back. Allison kicked the back of the masked man’s knee before he could hit Ray again or stab him, using her high heel against the weakest point. The man’s leg buckled, but he didn’t fall as Allison had hoped, although at least he moved away from Ray to focus on her again. The man threw the bat away, probably because he couldn’t use it at full strength while holding a knife in his other hand. It crashed against a framed picture on the opposite wall, cracking the glass, unfortunately too far from Allison for her to grab it.

Allison started a deadly dance with her opponent. The rabbit mask was grotesquely large, with unsettlingly narrow slits for the eyes, a pink nose, and big protruding teeth poking out of the fake mouth. What was it with the Commission and creepy masks? The mask made her want to snort, but the knife and the way the man wielded it were nothing to laugh at. A line of pain burned across her right forearm when he managed to nick her, but with battle adrenaline coursing through her veins it was only a distant concern. She had her attention split between her own fight, the groans of pain from Ray on the floor, making her pray that he would stay down and not draw attention to himself again, and the lack of warping sounds coming from where Five was fighting the other assassin—what the hell was he _doing_? Checking on him with a quick glance, she saw him swing the poker and hit his opponent hard enough in the elbow that Allison heard bone crack, so he was still holding his ground. 

A quick sweep of her opponent’s knife would have slashed her throat—not again!—if she hadn’t dodged it in time. _Focus, Number Three!_ “I’m getting seriously ticked off now,” she said through clenched teeth, punching at the same time. “Get out of my house!”

The punch managed to get past the man’s guard and connect with his throat again. Allison’s feeling of victory was short-lived, because she caught sight of Ray moving again, pulling himself up to his feet. _Don’t move, please don’t move!_ she screamed at him inwardly. To capture the rabbit-masked man’s attention, she fought harder, trying to grab his arm and wrestle him out of his knife, nightmare visions of a gutted Ray flicking in front of her mind’s eye. She stepped back, drawing the man away from Ray, who had now unfolded to his whole length, completely upright. _Stay where you are!_

The side-steps she’d made had moved Five’s fight in her peripheral vision again. She saw the familiar blue light— _finally!_ —and then the same blue distortion a few feet away—but to Allison’s shock and surprise, instead of her brother stepping out of it, the blue glimmer _spasmed_ , blinked, then Five was spat out in a tangle of limbs half-a-foot away. The assassin in the frog mask didn’t waste any time striding toward Five, who looked dazed, and grabbing him by the throat.

Allison swallowed back the urge to shout Five’s name, avoiding another blow from the assassin she was fighting. If she went to Five’s help, she would leave her husband unprotected—she could see him hovering in the back, looking for an opportunity to join the fight. But Five was suspended in the air, his feet dangling, making strangled noises. What should she do? With a cry of rage, she kicked the rabbit-masked man in the chest, making him stumble back a few steps.

Taking advantage of the seconds of respite it gave her, Allison turned toward where the frog-masked man was busy strangling Five. “ _I heard a rumor_ …” she shouted breathlessly. She saw a flash of white flicker out of the holes in the mask, so the compulsion was taking hold, though the assassin was still squeezing Five in his grip. “… _that you were so terrified of us that you ran away_.”

Her chest heaving, Allison watched as the man opened his hand and dropped Five on the floor, before letting out a terrible, wrenching cry of heart-stopping terror and running toward the entrance, tripping on the rug in his haste to get away. The assassin in the rabbit mask wavered, visibly rattled by his partner’s sudden defection. Allison took a step toward him and he stepped backward. Though her heart was still pounding steadily, Allison’s panic at the situation had vanished, swept away by the endorphin rush the use of her power gave her. She was in control now, and the man had to know it.

“ _I head a rumor_ …” she said very softly, “… _that you were done with your job and walked away_.”

A lot more casually than his partner, the assassin turned on his heels and left the house, walking past a stunned Ray. Once the front door had closed behind him, Allison met Ray’s wide eyes and the full weight of what had happened hit her. Ray had _seen_ her; there would be no half-truth, no making the story of her life more palatable to him. This time, she would need to tell him everything.

She was distracted from that train of thoughts by the coughing and wheezing that came from where Five had been dropped. She hurried to his side as he was rising on his hands and knees.

“Are you all right?” she asked, throwing an arm around his waist to help him up. “What was that? It looked like you… glitched or something. What’s wrong with your power?”

“I don’t know,” Five rasped, pushing her away as soon as he was standing. He brushed the red hand mark on his throat with his fingertips and grimaced. “It’s been doing this since I woke up.”

“So that’s why you haven’t been jumping, at least not in front of me.” She gave his shoulder a shove. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why do you always have to keep things to yourself?”

Instead of rising to the bait, Five glanced over her shoulder and said, “I think you should be more worried about the things _you_ ’ve been keeping to yourself right now.”

Allison turned and saw Ray watching them. Of course she’d known he was watching them, but she’d cowardly ignored it. Ray had seen her and he’d seen Five too, even if what he’d seen was a flubbed version of what Five usually did. Ray had seen enough to know that neither of them were normal.

“I’ll leave you two talk,” Five said, the gravel of his voice painful to hear. He picked up the knife that his attacker had dropped and pocketed it. “I’ll do a perimeter sweep, see if they’ve left any surprise behind or if anyone is watching the house. You should have killed them. If they realize what happened they’ll be back to complete their assignment.”

“Well, you’re welcome,” Allison said acidly, her face feeling hot, hyper aware that Ray was listening to their conversation.

Five shrugged and walked out with plodding steps, his body stooped in exhaustion. Allison almost wanted to call him back, childishly afraid to be left alone with the consequences of her own lies, but this was a private matter between her and Ray, and Five was shit emotional support anyway. 

“We need to talk,” she said once Five was gone, hating how small her voice sounded.

“Yes, we do.” The shock on his face had drained away and his expression was closed off, though not hostile or angry. “Let’s go to the bedroom so we won’t be disturbed.”

With a sinking stomach, Allison followed him to their room.

—-

Huddled on the bed, Vanya tried to gather her scattered memories. She’d been playing with Harlan outside. No, not outside exactly, because they’d been playing hide-and-seek and she’d been looking for Harlan in the barn. He always hid in the barn and it was never very difficult to find him. Had she found him? She didn’t know; the next thing she could remember was waking up in this unfamiliar room. Unless it was only unfamiliar because of her amnesia—maybe hours had passed since playing in the barn with Harlan, or even days, and in between her real family had found her and brought her back home. Hell, maybe years had gone by and she’d forgotten _again_.

She finally managed to talk herself into leaving the bed and looking out the window. It was more terrifying than it should have been, even though she kept repeating to herself that her fears were baseless. The room didn’t look like a prison cell, or a hospital room, or a dungeon, or anything scary. It was just a normal, though bland and sterile, bedroom. And when she got to the window, all she could see was a band of grass bordered by a tall hedge of wester red cedars. She couldn’t see anything behind the hedge, only a rectangle of blue sky. The bird was gone. 

She was staring dumbly at the lawn, the hedge and the sky, trying to force herself to remember something, when a clicking sound startled her. She whirled around and looked at the door, where the sound had come from. The doorknob rattled and muffled cursing could be heard from behind the door. With her heart jackhammering in her chest, Vanya looked around the room for something she could use as a weapon, all the reassurances she’d given herself on how normal the situation was flying away. Someone was trying to pick the lock to her room—whoever that was, she would feel better with something to defend herself.

The room was barren, not at all looking like someone was sleeping there regularly, and the only thing she could find was the lamp on the nightstand, which she unplugged and held over her head just as the door opened.

A man unfurled from a crouch, looking at her. He was dressed in loose white pants and a white t-shirt, white sneakers on his feet, and had messy dark hair and a beard. A scar slashed across his right temple and another shorter one cut through his left eyebrow. He stepped back in the corridor—white wall, grey carpet—and eyed her warily. He looked athletic, so it made no sense that he would look at her like that, as though he expected her to pounce. Instead of making Vanya feel more confident, it only increased her uncertainty, and her hands tightened around the leg of the lamp.

“Vanya,” the man said. The surprise was such that Vanya’s hands dropped from their defensive position. “What are you doing with that lamp? If you want to attack me, you can just use your thing. Are you going to use your thing?”

“You know me?” was the first question that burst out of Vanya, though she had more whirling around in her head.

“What?” The man’s eyes narrowed. “What are you trying to pull? Of course I know you. You’re Vanya.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t—I don’t remember. Who are _you_?”

“Okay, that takes the—I’m _Diego_ ,” the man said in an overly loud and articulate voice, like he thought there was a problem with her ears. He jabbed a finger at his own chest. “Diego! Your brother!”

“My—”

“I just woke up in another room and I don’t know where the fuck we are. Do _you_ know where we are?”


	5. Chapter 5

Ray’s stomach hurt where he’d been hit with the bat and it was painful to stand upright, so he sat down on the bed. Allison was hurt too, bleeding from a gash on her forearm; she’d grabbed a towel from the bathroom and had wrapped it around the wound, looking not overly concerned about it even though blood was already seeping through the sponge fabric. Ray wanted to tell her to take care of it, but the words wouldn’t come out. Exhaustion of the kind he’d never felt before had draped itself over his shoulders and he was so goddamn _confused_. He couldn’t make himself fuss over Allison’s injury because he wasn’t sure of his place in her life anymore. The ring on his finger felt like a prop, something fake and meaningless. Allison stood in front of him, looking nervous but not talking yet, and Ray told himself to be patient. Even though it was possible that their marriage didn’t mean anything to her, it meant something to him, so he could at least listen to her one last time and consider what she had to say.

Allison took a deep breath and said, “Most of what I told you is the truth.”

“But not the whole truth,” Ray said.

“No. There’s just _so much_. I didn’t know how to explain it to you so you would believe me.”

Ray wanted to say that she should have trusted him enough to try, but he could barely believe what he’d seen with his own eyes, so maybe this was fair. He couldn’t swear on how he would have reacted.

“Tell me everything now,” he said. “I’ll keep an open mind.”

“All right. So here’s the truth: we were adopted by a billionaire named Reginald Hargreeves. But he had a specific reason for adopting us. It’s because we all have… special abilities. Powers. And when I told you were all the same age, I left out the fact that we were born on the same day. October 1 is _our_ birthday.”

“So that’s why you were so despondent on that day,” Ray said. He’d assumed she’d had a bad experience on her birthday and had kept himself from prying.

“Yeah,” Allison said. “I was missing my siblings. I always missed them the most on our birthday. We never really knew what it meant, that we were born on the same day, because our father was a secretive man, but it can’t be a coincidence. Growing up, our father trained us in the use of our powers. And when we turned twelve, we became a team of superpowered kid vigilantes named the Umbrella Academy. That’s what the tattoo means,” she explained, pointing to the umbrella tattoo on her wrist that had so intrigued Ray. “When I said we were like soldiers, I meant it literally. We fought, and we were hurt, and we killed—and _were_ killed, because our brother Ben died on a mission. We were celebrities too, the nation’s little darlings. If anyone worried about what this was doing to young kids to be used that way, then I guess Dad had the money and influence to shush them.”

“You say you were famous,” Ray said, frowning. The ache in his stomach muscles was distracting and he felt muddled again, having to force himself to focus. “But I’ve never heard of ‘the Umbrella Academy.’ Even if you lived up north, I think this kind of thing would have made national news.”

“It did. It even made international news. We were world-famous. But—" Restlessly, she tugged on the end of the towel to wrap it more tightly around her arm. “That’s the other part I didn’t tell you about, but in order for you to understand it, I need to tell you more about Five. You saw what he did, back there.”

“He… teleported, right? But there was this weird glitching light.”

“It doesn’t usually do this. There’s something wrong with his power.” Allison glanced at the closed door of their bedroom, as though she hoped to check on her brother through it. “But yes, he can teleport—or rather, he can bend space. If you’re feeling brave enough, you can ask him to explain it to you and he’ll be happy to monologue at length with a lot of scientific jargon. The important thing is that Five can bend _time_ too.”

“You mean—” Ray had read a lot of comic books as a kid, and despite the shock and confusion of it all, there was a part of him that had genuinely perked up when Allison had started talking about superpowers. So he thought he knew where she was going with this, but it felt too silly to say out loud. “You can’t mean—”

“You never heard of us because ‘the Umbrella Academy’ hasn’t happened yet. Five time-travelled us from the year 2019, but this was apparently too much for him and we got scattered across the sixties. I landed in 1961; Klaus, who you met, was there a year earlier—oh, and the weird asides you said he was making are because his power is that he can talk to the dead. I assume there must be some ghosts hanging around the police station.”

“Oh, all right,” Ray heard himself say, as though they were having a perfectly normal conversation on a mundane subject. At some point his brain had decided that he should just embrace the insanity, because fighting it was too much of a strain. “But why time-travel at all? It sounds like it was a hazardous journey. And who were the people who attacked us?”

“Well, we didn’t have any choice but travel. We would have died otherwise. As for who those people were… I told you that Five ran away when we were kids, right?”

“I remember, yes,” Ray said, though he failed to see what this had to do with his enquiry.

“It was because of a fight he had with our father on the subject of time-travel. He thought he was ready to try it, Dad disagreed, and Five was always a prideful and argumentative kid…”

Allison launched herself into a story about her brother Five that managed to outdo the reveals she’d just made in terms of bizarre. She told him how her brother had accidentally travelled forward sixteen years into the future, found a ravaged world and was unable to leave it for decades. Her tale continued with Five being recruited as an assassin by a time-traveling organization that ‘protected the timeline’—whatever that meant—and then traveling back to his siblings on the day of their father’s funeral. She finished by explaining how they’d discovered that the end of the world was brought on by an uncontrolled release of their sister Vanya’s power that their father had suppressed, and that in the end they’d had no choice but to let Five travel them back through time. 

“So,” Ray said when she was done, leaning heavily on his elbows. He felt like Allison’s words were a torrent that had hit him head on and carried him away to some unknown destination. “The world ends in 2019.”

“Well, we hope to prevent it. If we can find Vanya and help her control her power… Although she’s apparently been here for a month and nothing has happened, so maybe she’s gotten a handle on it already.”

“And Five is…”

“Fifty-eight.”

“Somehow, this is the most believable thing in all this. And he’s an assassin.” It brought into new light Klaus’ comment on how Ray had survived his first encounter with Five.

“Well, yes, but how much of a choice did he have?” Allison said defensively. “Can you imagine being alone in a destroyed world for so long? When someone came up to him with a way out of what must have basically been hell, can it really be called a choice when he accepted it?”

Her chin went up a little, her shoulders squaring, and Ray had a vision of seven little children standing shoulder to shoulder, looking at the rest of the world out of a window, closing ranks against attacks from the outside. Allison wouldn’t take anything he might say against her brother well, not in the mood she was in right now—in that scenario _Ray_ was the outside attack.

“I can’t imagine,” he said. “This must have been awful. I’m not judging your brother’s choice; I’m just stating a fact. Do you think the assassins who attacked us will be back?”

“Maybe,” she said, the defensiveness easing out of her posture. “I’m really sorry about that. They hadn’t come for me before, so I thought I was safe from them.”

They might have come for Five, then, but Ray bit on his tongue before he said it. “What do you plan to do when you find your siblings, Allison? You said you hope to reverse the destruction of the world in 2019. Does it mean that… you’re leaving? Are you leaving once you’ve found them? Your brother Klaus mentioned that you were married before.”

Allison’s eyes filled with tears, the line of her mouth becoming thin and wobbly, and Ray knew what she was going to say. “I have to go, Ray. I was married, yes, but we divorced so it’s not about that. I have a little girl.” Her voice quivered with that sentence. “Her name is Claire and she’s five. She was destroyed with the rest of the world and I can’t… If Five finds a way to get us back before the world ends, I have to go.”

“I—” Ray had to pause to swallow, the pain constricting his lungs not just because of the blows he’d taken anymore. “I understand. But if you knew you would have to leave, why did you… Why accept to marry me at all?”

Allison blinked and two tears spilled from her eyes, running down her cheeks. “I didn’t know when Five would come back. I told you, the first time he was gone for over sixteen years. I was ready to wait for as long as it took to see my daughter again, but I didn’t want to do it alone. I didn’t know whether my siblings were alive. I needed someone to hold onto, and I fell in love with you.”

“Okay,” Ray said. He ran a hand down his face, blinking back his own tears. “And what about—what about your power? It looked like you _mind-controlled_ those assassins.”

Allison sniffed and wiped her tears with a corner of the bloody towel around her arm. “Yes, I… When I say the phrase—well, your heard it—and direct it at someone with intent, they have to do whatever I say in the end of that sentence. With my siblings, we call it ‘rumoring.’”

“Did you ever use it on me?”

“No! I haven’t used it at all since I landed here, only that one time you just witnessed. I didn’t want to use it anymore, but that man was going to kill Five, and I was afraid the other assassin would hurt you if I went to—”

“All right, I believe you,” he said, raising a hand to stop her rambling.

“You do?” she said, her eyes big and still shiny with tears. “You believe that I didn’t use my power on you?”

Ray took a moment to think over his answer. He’d thought once before that he was choosing to believe her because he couldn’t imagine a marriage without trust, and she’d been hiding so many things from him then. He understood why she’d decided to hide those things, but that meant he could all too easily imagine a situation where Allison would have felt she had no other choice but to use her power on him, and couldn’t admit to it now.

“Would I know it if you had?” he asked. When she slowly shook her head, he said, “I need some time to think. I’m going to stay at Miles’ tonight.”

Painfully, he stood up, while Allison babbled, “No, Ray, wait! I promise I never used it on you, I swear to god. I swear it on my daughter’s head.”

“I’m not saying I don’t believe you, I’m just saying I need some alone time right now.”

“But you’re hurt! You need to—”

“I’ll be able to rest at Miles’ house.” One of her hands, bloody from her own injury, landed on his forearm and he pushed it away as gently as he could. “I’ll call you later, all right? I’m not leaving for good.”

Not like she would, and when she let her hand drop he could see it on her face. He took a few steps toward the exit of the room, realizing that if she wanted it, she could make him stay. She could make him forget about this conversation, maybe even about the attack. He didn’t know what the limits of her power were. He left the room and Allison didn’t try to stop him again. He could hear her sob inside their bedroom, but she let him leave.

In the living room, Five was lying on the couch, a glass of whiskey on the floor with the bottle next to it. When Ray came back, there probably wouldn’t be a drop of alcohol left in the house.

“You’re leaving?” Five asked in a hoarse voice, pushing himself into a sitting position. 

Ray tensed, everything Allison had told him about her brother rushing back to him. This boy who sat on his couch and drank his whiskey, who wore shorts and knee-high socks and a school blazer, was actually a man who had killed people for a living. And really, for all that it sounded outrageous on paper, Ray didn’t find it that hard to believe. There was a glint of coldness in Five’s eyes, a confidence in his posture, a weariness in his expression that no child could possess. It didn’t matter whether Ray agreed or not about Allison’s point that Five’s choices hadn’t been real choices—this was someone dangerous and volatile, who would probably not react kindly to the idea that Ray was taking a break from Allison.

Five picked up his glass from the floor and drank a sip. “I suppose you know about me, now,” he said.

“Allison has told me some things,” Ray said noncommittally. He was standing in the open space between the living room and the entrance hall, feeling like a deer caught in the firing line of a hunter. He didn’t know whether to stand still or run away.

“Right.” Five nursed his drink between his hands, the corner of his mouth quirking up in an expression of dry amusement. “You can relax, Raymond. Whatever is happening between you and Allison isn’t any of my business. If you’d somehow gotten past her guard and physically hurt her—highly improbable—then of course I’d have to kill you,” he said, shrugging a shoulder as though Ray would agree that it was only reasonable, “but for the rest, my sister is a grown woman who can handle herself. I think she really cares about you, if that matters.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Ray said, finding as he said it that he did believe Allison loved him. 

He hesitated, considering for the first time that he was leaving his wife with a murderer in the house. Of course, he was Allison’s brother and she didn’t seem afraid of him, but she’d also said that Five had been gone for a long time. His goal appeared to be saving the world, but who could say to what lengths he would go for it?

“What’s on your mind?” Five asked, so Ray must be tired enough that his feelings were broadcast pretty obviously. “I sense that you have something to say.”

“What are you dragging Allison into? We were never visited by any assassin before you came. I know Allison can defend herself against most dangers, but what if you get her into a situation where she’s in over her head?”

Five’s lips thinned and he poured himself more whiskey, which he drank in silence for a moment, long enough for Ray to wonder if he shouldn’t have shut his mouth. _Don’t go poke the bear, Ray_ , his old man used to say. _Keep your head down_. Ray had never been very good at it.

“Do you know what it’s like to have a purpose that’s more important than your own life?” Five finally asked.

“Yes,” Ray said, thinking of the movement and how it had changed his life. “I actually do. But I wouldn’t sacrifice Allison for it.”

“You misunderstand me,” Five said, looking up from his glass and meeting Ray’s eyes. Ray had thought his eyes looked cold before, but they didn’t anymore. The fire that burned in them looked like it could scorch the entire world black. “ _Allison_ is my purpose—she and my other siblings. This world is worth saving because it has my family in it.”

“Oh,” Ray said, at a loss for words.

Five’s smile was harsh and didn’t reach his eyes. “So you can leave and be at peace,” he said. “I may be a monster, but I’m a monster who would kill and _die_ for your wife’s sake.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I’m not offended. Only idiots are offended by the truth.” Five tilted his glass at him. “Have a great day.”

Feeling like he’d just been dismissed from his own house, Ray found his hat and jacket and left.

—-

Once she’d managed to get her sobbing under control, Allison went to the bathroom to clean up and bandage her wound. Checking herself in the mirror, she saw that her eyes were red and puffy, but the only other person in the house was Five, who wouldn’t care how she looked, so she didn’t bother refreshing her makeup. It was best that Ray had left the house, she told herself; Five was right, either the assassins would come back or others would be sent. But rational arguments felt flimsy against the grim perspective that this might be how things would end with Ray. She would have to leave him on that last conversation, tainting forever their one year of happy marriage. 

She found her brother in the living room, drinking. The finger marks on his neck had darkened and looked like they were going to bruise. Allison dropped down on the couch next to Five and gave his glass a pointed look. “You haven’t wasted any time finding the booze,” she said. 

“It’s good booze,” he said, his voice still scratchy. “Want some?”

“You know it’s _my_ house, right?”

“All the more reason to have a drink.”

“I don’t feel like bothering with a glass,” she said, which Five understood as the demand it was, so he passed her the bottle. 

They drank together in silence, heads leaning against the back of the couch, staring at the ceiling. The wound on her arm throbbed in time with her heartbeat but that pain was almost comforting in its familiarity, an anchor through the thickening haze the alcohol had wrapped around her mind. It reminded her of unwinding with her brothers in the car as they went back home post-mission, letting the adrenaline drain away from their systems, new aches blooming one after the other.

“Do you remember,” Five said out of the blue, “that time you pretended your doll was moving at night to freak out Diego?”

Allison snorted a laugh at the memory. The alcohol she’d just drunk spread in warm waves inside her stomach. “Yeah, he kept stealing stuff from my room to piss me off, the jerk. Served him well. But how do _you_ remember that? It’s been decades for you.”

“Memory is a muscle, children,” Five said, jerking his index in the air, “that you have to exercise every day.”

“God, please stop it,” Allison said with a groan. “I can still hear him say it. ‘It’s like all of your other muscles: if you don’t use it, it will eventually shrink to nothing.’”

“He was right about that,” Five said, his words slurring. She wondered how much he’d drunk already; he probably didn’t have the alcohol tolerance he was used to anymore. “Memory _is_ like a muscle. So I exercised it the best I could, so I wouldn’t forget. You all lived up here.” He pointed a finger at his temple. “Like a pack of raccoons making home in a dumpster.”

“Nice image,” Allison said, trying to keep her tone light despite the tightness in her throat. She drank more from the bottle, a too big lamp that burned her esophagus. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

Five’s head lolled against the back of the couch and he gave her a bleary look. “Ask away,” he said. “Can’t promise I’ll answer, though.”

“How did you know Claire’s name? That wasn’t in Vanya’s book, because I was still pregnant when she wrote it.”

“Oh, this.” Five sat up, rubbing his face with both hands. “I read about it in a gossip magazine. It was in an article about your divorce.”

“What, really? Of course _gossip magazines_ would survive the apocalypse.”

“I was looking for stuff to feed a fire, but the glossy paper of gossip magazines isn’t great for that, so I was about to throw it away when I saw your name. I read the whole thing, and it mentioned Claire. Even had a photo of her.”

Allison tried to picture it, her brother looking the way he did now but less hardened, less world weary, scavenging among the rubbles and coming across a magazine mentioning her, then sitting down and avidly reading it. The images she managed to conjure felt fake, like a badly acted play with a miscast actor. She’d asked Ray if he could imagine what it was like to live on your own in a destroyed world, but to be perfectly honest _she_ couldn’t imagine what it had been like for Five. It was one of those things that were too big to wrap your mind around, like how it was easier to comprehend the impact of ten deaths than a million. 

“Despite finding your bodies,” Five continued unprompted, “it hadn’t fully hit me that you’d become adults who had adult lives. It’d never occurred to me that one of you might have had a kid, and that I was an uncle.”

“How old were you when you found that magazine?”

“It was in the early days, so fourteen, maybe?” He turned his glass between his hands and the amber liquid sloshed inside. “I kept the magazine with me for a few years, until I lost most of my things in a building collapse.”

“And you remembered her name,” Allison said, her voice thickening with emotion, “for over forty years?”

“If I can remember a stupid prank you played on Diego when we were kids, then of course I can remember your _daughter_ ’s name,” Five said, looking affronted.

“No, I mean—” Allison squeezed her eyes shut. Grief was a stain on the fabric of her mind and she carried it everywhere—her grief for the loss of Ben, for her daughter’s wavering existence, for her missing siblings, for the fact that she would have to leave Ray. She hadn’t realized that she’d carried her grief over Five too, that she could still grieve for him even as he sat right next to her. “Jesus, Five.”

“Are you crying?” Allison still had her eyes closed, so she couldn’t see his face, but he sounded annoyed. “I wouldn’t have answered your question if I’d known that you would start _crying_ over it.”

“I’m not crying,” Allison said, a blatant lie. When they were playing as kids, the first to cry automatically lost, whatever the game. “I told her about you, you know?”

She opened her eyes in time to catch the hint of vulnerability that flitted across his face. “You told Claire about me?” he said.

“I told her about all of her uncles and aunt,” Allison said, alcohol freeing her tongue. “I used to turn our Umbrella Academy adventures into bedtime stories for her—a heavily edited version, of course. For a long time I wasn’t quite sure how to broach the subject of how you’d gone missing. I mean, I was afraid it would be too upsetting for a little kid to hear about how we didn’t know what had happened to you. But she’s a sharp kid, and she eventually caught up to the fact that you weren’t in all the stories. So I ended up telling her the truth, that you were gone one day and we didn’t know where you were. She was a bit upset, yes, but she took it better than I thought. I told her that her uncle Five was tough and that wherever he was, he was probably doing all right. She sent you plenty of good wishes.”

Five coughed but when Allison looked at him, he turned his face away so she wouldn’t see his expression. “You told your kid weird bedtime stories,” he said. 

“She loved hearing about you guys,” Allison said. “I always wanted her to meet all of you, but it was hard to think of a way to make it happen without it turning into a disaster.”

Five brought his glass to his mouth, his teeth clicking against the rim. “I’ll make it happen,” he said into the glass, his voice echoing weirdly in it. “I swear I will.”

“Yeah, I know,” Allison said, swallowing. It sounded like a dream too good to come true, to imagine her daughter meeting her siblings. She needed to change the subject before she started bawling again. “But, hey, why were you thinking about the prank I did on Diego?”

“It’s because this whole day has felt like this, like every time we’re getting closer to one of our siblings, they’re slipping between our fingers. Like a stupid fucking doll being magicked away.”

“What, you think something happened to Klaus and Diego? Klaus met Ray just this morning, and… If it were the Commission’s assassins, bodies would have been found, right? At least Diego’s body, if they’d gotten to him at the hospital.”

“The Commission provides body removal services,” Five said grimly. “I don’t know, maybe it’s not the Commission. I don’t think they could have taken down Diego so easily, at least, so if he’d been murdered _someone_ would have heard or seen something. Still, the whole situation feels off.”

“In a few hours, we’ll be able to go to The Carousel Club and maybe we’ll find Luther there,” Allison said, but in truth she was getting a bit discouraged too, though maybe the alcohol and her conversation with Ray had something to do with it.

“I hope so,” Five said. “I really do.”

—-

One drunken nap and a hasty dinner later, Five and Allison made their way to Jack Ruby’s nightclub on Commerce. Drinking had made Five’s headache worse, but at least he could blame it on a hangover now. Allison looked like her head hurt a little too, from the way she kept frowning and her sensitivity to cars honking, and since misery loved company it made Five feel a little less wretched himself. Stupid kid body got drunk so easily, it was a shame that all his hard-earned practice amounted to nothing now. 

“You know they’re going to throw us out, right?” Allison said. “This isn’t a place for either of us.”

They were standing in front of The Carousel Club, the light from the neon sign so bright it stabbed into Five’s brain. Upbeat music escaped from the inside and it grated on his nerves. Both things combined made him feel murderous, which might just be the mood they needed right now.

“If Luther does work here,” he said, “the problem will solve itself as soon as he’ll see us. If he isn’t here tonight, we’ll have to ask. Maybe I should do the talking this time.”

“So we can have the _mafia_ after us on top of the Commission?” Allison said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Hey, I can be civil if the situation calls for it.” Allison snorted, but he magnanimously pretended she hadn’t. “And it wouldn’t be my first time dealing with the mafia. If you’re uncomfortable with getting involved, you can wait outside.”

Allison reacted to that suggestion the way Five had expected. “Hell, no,” she said. “We said we’d stick together, didn’t we?”

“Let’s hope Luther is here, then.”

The inside of the club was dimly lit, which would have been a blessing if not for the annoying whine of a trumpet. Men were clustered around round tables and cheering at the stage, where a young woman in orange underwear was wriggling her body and waving large fluffy feathers. A group of particularly enthusiastic men in blue navy sailor outfits were whistling their appreciation, the piercing sounds making Five’s fists clench reflexively. He couldn’t see Luther anywhere—not a good sign, since his brother wasn’t hard to spot in a crowd.

A young woman with short bleached blond hair, wearing a sparkly see-through top and an indecently short skirt, trotted up to them on perilously high heels. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice a pleasant drawl, “but I think you got the wrong establishment. We don’t allow minors in here, or colored people. I’m really sorry.”

Her smile looked genuinely apologetic, so Five drew on every ounce of civility he possessed to say, “We’re looking for Luther Hargreeves. Someone told us he worked here—is that correct?”

The woman perked up at the name. “Oh, Luther, yes! He works here, yes. Well, actually—” With a frown, she gave the inside of the club a sweeping look. “—I don’t think I’ve seen him tonight. That’s odd.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“Oh, no. I know he’s renting a room somewhere, but he’s very private. I could ask—”

A man was coming up from behind the woman, and Five identified him as Jack Ruby from pictures he’d seen back when he’d been preparing for the Kennedy job—not even two weeks ago, as far as he could remember, but it felt a lifetime already; a life when he’d still been a small cog in a sprawling machine, unable to work on his true purpose. Ruby’s bulldog face was pulled with annoyance and Five slipped a hand in his pocket, his fingers closing around the knife he’d gained from the Commission assassin he’d fought.

“Is there a problem here?” Ruby asked, looking from Allison and Five to his employee.

“Everything is fine, Mr. Ruby!” the young woman said, the brightness in her tone cranked up a notch from how she’d talked to Five. “Those people are just looking for Luther.”

“Why?” Ruby gave Allison a long up-and-down look, his surly expression turning into a leer. “He your boyfriend or something? I didn’t know his tastes ran that way.”

Allison’s jaw visibly clenched, and Five could tell how hard she was restraining herself, even if Ruby probably couldn’t. But the last time she’d hit a white man, her husband had gotten arrested, so she wouldn’t dare repeat that mistake. Well, that was all right. Five didn’t have anything like that holding him back. He took a step forward and flipped his new blade open, keeping his arm close to his side so his body would block the knife out of anyone’s line of sight. The pointy tip of the blade poked into the flabby flesh of Ruby’s belly. Ruby’s eyes widened and he made a small strangled sound.

“Hi,” Five said, pitching his voice low. “My name is Number Five and I’m having an execrable day. I know I don’t look like much, but the truth is that I’ve killed more people than you have pubic hair.”

“Mr. Ruby?” the girl asked uncertainly. Ruby’s bulk hid Five’s knife from her but she was close enough to tell that something was wrong. 

“Autumn,” Ruby said in a tight voice, “call—”

“Nuh-huh,” Five said, pressing his knife harder into Ruby. “I see that you don’t believe me. Let me put it that way: in the position I am now, it wouldn’t take any skill at all for me to skewer your liver. Someone might even accidentally push me and I’d lose my balance—wouldn’t that be unfortunate? So let’s not waste any time. What my sister and I want to know is where Luther Hargreeves resides. Once you’ve told us this, everyone gets to walk away with their bowels intact.”

The beam from one of the spotlights above the stage swept over them, illuminating for a second Ruby’s sweaty face. His eyes were so round from the shock that they looked about to pop out of their sockets. Five’s headache, his exhaustion, the undetermined feeling of wrongness deep in his chest cavity that still bothered him, all receded behind the rush of his blood in his ears, the crystal clarity that impending violence brought him. 

“Do you—” Ruby had to pause and lick his lips before he could finish that sentence. “Do you know who I am?”

“Oh, I know who you are, Jack,” Five said, giving the man a smile that showed his teeth, as he knew how disturbing it looked, especially in that body. “I know who you are, what you will do, and how you will die.”

Ruby’s Adam apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “Luther Hargreeves works for me,” he said in a slightly hoarse but controlled voice. “Or worked, at least. He missed a big fight today and lost me a lot of money, so if you see him, you can tell him that he’s not welcome anymore.”

“A fight?” Allison said. “I thought he was your bouncer.”

Ruby’s eyes didn’t stray from Five as he answered. “He does a little bit of everything, but he’s an amazing fighter. Strong like an ox. Would be a shame not to take advantage of it.” He squawked when Five narrowed his eyes and pushed his knife, feeling the fabric of Ruby’s jacket tear under the pressure. “But I was paying him of course! He made good money. I helped him out when he was basically homeless; he _owes_ me.”

“Well, consider my brother’s debt paid by me sparing your life,” Five said.

“Your brother?” Ruby’s eyes drifted from Five to look at Allison. “How—”

“Focus, Jack,” Five said, drawing Ruby’s attention back to him with the tip of his knife. “I have one last question for you: where does Luther live?”

“He—he rents a room at the Piano Street Rooming House for Solitary Men, at the corner between Piano and Harwood. I don’t know anything else! He’s never missed work before. He must have skipped town for whatever reason.”

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Five said, pulling away and pocketing back his knife. “We’ll be going now.”

He jerked his head at Allison, who didn’t need him to tell her that they had to be moving quickly. Now that Five wasn’t holding him at knife’s point, Ruby had all the leisure to call for his security service. Five and Allison walked briskly toward the exit, hearing Ruby yell for his men in the background. Once outside, Five said, “Let’s maybe run, shall we?” and they both took off running, swerving into the first side street they found. They heard stomping footsteps come up after them, men shouting orders to each other, but with a few twists and turns it was easy enough to lose their pursuers. They took refuge at the back of blocks of apartments, the space barely lit by the bulbs hanging in front of the lower doors and the light coming from the apartments’ windows.

Allison doubled up, hands on her knees as she caught her breath. “Luther… wouldn’t miss work without a good reason. Especially not if that asshole told us the truth and he saved Luther from the streets. You were right—something’s off.”

“Yeah,” Five said, pushing sweaty bangs off his eyes. His head pounded so badly he wanted to throw up. “I’m generally right, but I wish I hadn’t been in this case.”

“Do you think—” Allison’s voice caught and her words faltered. In the semi darkness, Five could see the white of her widened eyes, the sound of her heaving breathing too loud for the quiet little courtyard. “Do you think that the Commission got them? That they—that they _killed_ them?”

“What I said earlier still stands,” Five said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt. His pulse still thrummed wildly and he could feel his hands shake, in very little part because of the exertion. “I can’t believe that the Commission could have killed all of them without causing a ripple—maybe Klaus, although from what happened at the Icarus theater, his powers seem to be evolving, and Luther and Diego would certainly have kicked up a fuss. Jack Ruby would have heard about it.”

“So, what, they were kidnapped? Would the Commission do this?”

“To use against me, maybe. _She_ would.” He’d shown his hand, back in 2019. The Handler now knew that she could use his family against him, even if she couldn’t comprehend why. “But then why send assassins after us? It makes no sense.”

“If not the Commission, though, then who?”

A most excellent question, that Five didn’t have the time to consider before a series of banging gun shots rang out. A car was parked next to one of the staircases leading to the higher floors and its windshield exploded, while shouts and exclamations came from within the buildings. In a common reflex, Five and Allison flattened themselves against a brick wall, trying to pinpoint where the shots came from. A bullet hissed past Five’s head and lodged itself into the brick wall, shards of brick sprinkling Five and Allison, who both dropped down to a crouch.

“The dumpster, go!” Five said to Allison.

Keeping their heads down, they hurried across the courtyard while bullets flew around them, skidding against the walls, the parked car, the dumpster. From inside one of the apartments, they could hear a child wail in terror. Once in the relative protection of the dumpster, Five took a moment to catch his breath before he quickly poked his head over the dumpster to confirm his impression on where the shots were coming from.

“There are two of them on the roofs,” Allison said. “They must be the assassins from earlier. Shit.”

“One at the back, the other on the right side,” Five said, nodding in agreement. 

The courtyard was U-shaped, opening on a small street. The good news was that from where they were hiding right now, the assassin on the right side couldn’t see them behind the dumpster, while the one on top of the building at the back end of the U couldn’t get an angle on them. The bad news was that there was no way for them to get out of the courtyard without getting shot. The only weapon they had was Five’s knife and he couldn’t count on his powers at the moment.

The assassins must have machine guns and they took turns raining bullets on the courtyard. Five almost had to shout to make himself heard by Allison. “Can’t you rumor one of those assholes?” he asked, though he already knew the answer. 

“Not as long as they make that much noise!” Allison yelled back. “They need to be able to hear me.”

Of course. The constant shooting served that purpose too. If Allison couldn’t use her power either, they were screwed. Five hit his fist against the metallic wall of the dumpster so hard his knuckles stung. This was such a _stupid_ way to die, cornered like wounded deer by two mid-tier assassins—if only he could use his power! Range didn’t matter when he could jump. He risked looking over the top of the dumpster again and saw a moving shadow with a rabbit-shaped head on top of the building, giving him the exact location of one of the assassins. Maybe he _could_ jump, after all. If he took into account the way his jump was offset by the glitching… it would be highly unpleasant, but he’d powered through worse.

“Be ready,” he told Allison, taking out his knife so he would be poised to use it on arrival. 

“Ready for wh—”

The end of Allison’s sentence was cut off as Five slid into space. Like the last few times, he felt a full-bodied hiccup rattle the usual smoothness of the transition between the two points in space, and was coughed up on the other side like a cat’s hairball. He landed on his hands and knees, but that was fine, because he’d calculated correctly and was right behind the assassin he’d aimed for. He couldn’t see much, as his vision was warbled by a wave of dizziness so powerful that he knew he would fall if he tried to stand. Well, if he couldn’t stand up, then he just had to make the man come down to him—with a sweep of his knife, Five slashed the back of the assassin’s knees. The man hollered in pain and stopped shooting, dropping down to his knees.

From down in the courtyard, Allison’s voice resounded, vibrating with the weird echo that her power lent it, “ _I heard a rumor that you shot your partner._ ”

The man raised his machine gun and sent a volley of bullets in direction of his partner on the other roof. There was a cry, the sound of a body crumpling; Five took advantage of the fact that the assassin was still under Allison’s compulsion to lever himself with one hand on the man’s shoulder, using the other to slit his throat, cutting as deep as he could to make it quick. Warm blood from the severed carotid splashed his fingers and wrist. Five accompanied the fall of the man, who gurgled quietly until he became silent. Five then wiped his bloody hand on the assassin’s jacket and laboriously hauled himself back on his feet. The upward motion didn’t agree with him and his stomach lurched with nausea, his head still spinning. To go down he would either need to try and scale down the building while his arms and legs felt wobbly, or do another jump. Five grimaced at the thought, but the latter was the option that had the less chances of ending with him breaking his neck. With a sigh, he called onto his power and warped space around himself.

This time, he landed face first on the asphalt, and when he started to shakily push himself up the nausea hit him again and he threw up, mostly bile, coffee and alcohol, with a few lumps from the sandwich he’d swallowed earlier. Hands were on his back, and the only thing that kept Five from lashing out was the dim realization that the hands belonged to Allison.

“We—we need to go,” he muttered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, feet scraping on the ground as he tried to get up. “The police—someone will have called the police.”

“Up you go,” Allison said, pulling him up and then dragging him out in the street. “Come on.”

They walked away quickly, or at least as quickly as Five could manage it. As soon as he felt a little less unsteady, he disentangled himself from Allison’s grip to walk on his own. 

“They’ll send other assassins,” he said. “We shouldn’t go back to your place. We could go to Elliott’s store, I guess, unless you know another place where you could—Hey, are you listening?”

Allison looked straight ahead as she walked, her jaw clenched tight and her lips pressed in a thin line. “Yes, I’m listening,” she said shortly.

“What’s wrong?” he asked wearily.

“What’s wrong?” she repeated, giving him a sideway glance before looking ahead again. “Well, I hadn’t rumored anyone in over two years, and now I’ve done it three times in less than a day, and I just made a man kill his partner. But oh, nothing’s _wrong_.”

Five contained a sigh; he was so not up to handling Allison’s misgivings. “They’d have killed us. You realize that, right? They’d have killed both of us and walked away feeling satisfied about a job well done. Believe me, I know it first-hand.”

“Of course I know they’d have killed us!” Allison exclaimed, almost shouting it. A police car zoomed past them in the street, siren blaring and lights flashing, and it was with a visible effort that Allison contained another outburst and lowered her voice to go on, “I’ve killed people who wanted to kill us before. You were there for the first and there were more after you were gone. But that’s not who I _want_ to be. That’s not who I want as a mother for my daughter.”

“Sometimes you don’t have a choice,” Five said. An uncontrollable shiver ran through him and he pulled on the lapels of his uniform jacket. With nightfall the temperature had cooled considerably, but he wasn’t sure the chill he felt was entirely external, another worry that he had to set aside for later. “We were born different and that means normal isn’t in the cards for us. Really, this isn’t the right moment for soul-searching, Allison. They’ll come back for us and we have to find the others. So just shove it down and—”

“What, you mean like you do?” Allison’s voice had turned vicious and Five froze, recognizing that tone from old childhood memories. “That’s kind of my point. I don’t want to end up like _you_.” 

The blood rushing in Five’s ears meant he could hardly hear the street noises anymore. He swallowed and it sounded abnormally loud. His heart pounded, but he couldn’t have named what he was feeling. Allison and he had stopped on the sidewalk, and passersby had to walk around them, giving them weird looks as they did. Allison closed her eyes, wincing, and covered them with a hand.

“Five,” she said in a voice that had lost its edge, “That came out wrong. I, I’m—”

Before she could say more, Five pulled at the space around him and jumped away.

—-

Vanya burned with a myriad of questions for her newfound brother. Diego didn’t look much like her, his skin and hair noticeably darker than her own. Well, to be perfectly honest, what tripped her up was that he looked Latino and she didn’t, but it felt… rude to point it out. It didn’t mean she didn’t wonder—were they half-siblings? Adopted? What was the rest of their family like? What had her life been like before? 

But Diego acted so tense with her that it wasn’t easy to find the right opening for her questions. She’d tried to prepare herself to having no family, or having one she wasn’t close to. To be confronted with a brother who behaved as though he expected her to attack him at any moment, never mind that he was taller and looked much stronger than her, was even more disheartening than what she’d expected.

“Do you remember how you got here?” she asked tentatively.

They were standing in the corridor outside of the bedroom where she’d woken up. It was as nondescript as the room, with not even a picture to brighten up the blank walls. There was a closed door at each end of the corridor, and three other doors aside from the one Vanya had walked out of, one on the left and two more on the right. All the doors were identical and didn’t give them any indication on what lay behind.

“No.” Diego’s eyes moved from one door to the other, as though he wanted to watch all of them at once in case one of them opened. “I was a little… out of it. Those bastards wouldn’t have gotten the jump on me otherwise.”

“Were you drunk?” Vanya asked without thinking, and Diego’s head whipped to her.

“No!” he exclaimed, looking offended, like she’d implied something worse. “I don’t drink. That shit is bad for you. No, I was at a mental hospital and they gave me a shot of something to ‘calm me down’, they said. I was still a bit loopy when I escaped.”

“Oh,” Vanya said, resisting the urge to take a step back. 

“I’m not crazy,” Diego said. “It’s just that—”

Before he could explain himself, the door closest to them was torn off its hinges and flung against the wall of the corridor. Vanya yelped and Diego jumped in front of her, arms spread out as though to shield her. A massive, towering silhouette appeared in the doorway, so big it barely fit in the frame. Vanya froze in terror, but Diego’s arms dropped and his shoulders relaxed.

“What the hell, Luther?”

“Diego?”

The hulking body was topped by a head that was a little too small for its bulk, with short blond hair and a fair stubble dusting the cheeks. The man’s mouth was half-open in surprise as he stared at Diego.

“It’s fine,” Diego told Vanya. “He’s our brother.”

“Vanya?” said the man named Luther—yet another brother, apparently. 

His face moved with several quick expressions, too fast for Vanya to read them. He looked tense, though, just like Diego had been when he’d recognized her. What had she done to them? The more Vanya tried to wrack her head to remember something, the sicker and colder she felt. Whatever it was, it was something _bad_. Words of apology crowded in her mouth, but she hesitated to say them, afraid that they might come across as insincere as long as she didn’t remember what had happened.

“She doesn’t remember anything,” Diego said, throwing her a look. “Or so she says.”

Vanya wanted to protest at his disbelief, but that feeling of creeping shame held her back. As far as she knew, maybe Diego was right not to believe her. She might be fully deserving of his anger—though it was strange that despite Diego’s open distrust of her, his reflex when the door had burst out had been to protect her. What exactly had their relationship been like?

“You really don’t remember anything?” Luther asked, his voice soft and hesitant. “Not even about when we were kids? Not about—”

“Nothing,” Vanya said. “A black hole. I was hit by a car about a month ago and I don’t remember anything from before. Well, other than my first name. What—what’s my last name? _Our_ last name?”

“Hargreeves,” Luther said, his wide eyes still staring at Vanya, as though he expected her to suddenly transform into a snake pit. “You’re Vanya Hargreeves.”

“Vanya Hargreeves,” Vanya repeated softly, testing the way the name sounded in her mouth. It felt like it fit. “I’m sorry about… I don’t know about what, but the two of you act like I’ve done something bad.”

“No, no,” Luther said, shaking his head. “You shouldn’t apologize.”

“Well, maybe a little,” Diego muttered.

“I’m the one who should apologize to _you_ ,” Luther went on, ignoring the interruption, his voice thick with emotion. “I let you down. I thought I was protecting everyone, but I should have been protecting _you_ too instead of—”

“Let’s maybe get into this later,” Diego said, more forcefully than before. “Whoever took us, you’ll have drawn them to us with all the ruckus you made.”

“They probably already knew the two of you were out of your rooms,” Luther said, pointing a finger toward a top corner at the end of the corridor, where a camera with a blinking red light was fitted. “They’re watching us.”

Vanya took advantage of the fact that Luther and Diego’s attention was on the camera to blink tears out of her eyes. At Luther’s words, she’d felt such a wave of overwhelming emotion that her hands were shaking from it. She didn’t know if she should call it grief, or guilt, or maybe relief, just that it was so strong she was surprised it hadn’t shattered her.

“If the three of us have been taken,” Diego was saying, “then it would make sense for the others to be here too.”

“Allison?” Luther said, sounding hopeful. “Klaus?”

“Maybe even Five. And if Five is here, it means we can go back home.” 

On the tail end of that sentence, Diego flung a hand toward the camera without looking and something flew out of it—a knife, which planted itself right into the lens of the camera with a cracking sound. 

“Here,” he said. “Those fuckers can’t watch us now.”

“Where were you hiding that knife?” Luther asked, eyebrows knitted in confusion, while Vanya still processed what Diego had done and just how _fast_ he’d done it.

“My knives were in the room when I woke up,” Diego said, which didn’t really answer the question. “Come on, let’s find the others.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The parts about how Five learns about Claire's name and Allison tells Claire about Five were inspired by this excellent fic by penhaligon, [kith and kin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18239735).


	6. Chapter 6

Soft morning light bathed the yellow house and the wide barn on the other side of the field where Five had parked the car he’d stolen. He’d spent a fitful night curled in its backseat, wrecked by nightmares he couldn’t remember but that left him with a bad aftertaste. He felt like he hadn’t slept at all and with morning had come painful clarity. His reaction to what Allison had said was so childish that it made him want to hide his face in shame. She’d been right to say that she didn’t want to become like him—he was no life goals, after all. Who would want to be like him? He’d told Raymond that only idiots were offended by the truth, so his impulse jump made him exactly the sort of idiot he’d ridiculed. If Dolores were there, she would mock him relentlessly for it; since she wasn’t, he had to do it himself.

Still, he had his pride and it was beyond him to just walk back to Allison like a sheepish kid, so this was how he’d ended up here, at the address from the newspaper ad, where he hoped to find Vanya. With the way Klaus, Diego and Luther had vanished into thin air, Five wasn’t very optimistic, but if she’d only been in the sixties for a month, there was a small chance that whoever had taken the others might not have her on their radar yet. Whether Five found Vanya at the farm or not, at least he could go back to Allison and say he’d actually done something while he was gone other than sulk because his _feelings_ had been hurt.

He left the stolen vehicle where it was, so the occupants of the farm wouldn’t wonder what a thirteen-year old was doing driving a car, and walked the long dirt path leading him to the house. After the din of the city, the quiet surrounding the farm was startling. Five had a rather fraught relationship with quiet—too much noise easily got on his nerves, but too intense quiet could bring him back _there_. For a long time, not even birds or insects had broken the deathly silence of the apocalypse. The only sounds, outside of the ones he made himself, had been caused by the weather, the hollow cry of the wind, the patter of the rain, the rumbling of thunder—forces of nature that could kill him rather than living things. He’d felt like an anomaly, an extra comma that would get ruthlessly edited, a tiny candle flame at the mercy of a mere breath. Nothing like finding yourself the last living being on the planet to make you reflect on the fragility and futility of your own existence.

Fortunately, clean air and joyful bird chirping made the place feel more peaceful than dead. A swing hung from a crossbar, indicating that a child probably lived here. Potted flowers lined the windows, completing the postcard air of the whole scene. In front of the door, Five took a moment to look down at himself, checking if he was presentable. He’d done his best to straighten his clothes, but they still looked a bit rumpled from him having slept in them, and although he’d wiped the blood on his hand, there was nothing he could do about the dried blood stains on his right cuff. He pulled on his jacket sleeve, hiding them as well as he could, and knocked on the door. 

It flung open, revealing a blond woman who stared at Five with red-rimmed eyes, mouth half-open as though she’d been about to say something. Obviously, Five wasn’t the person she’d expected. 

“Hi,” Five said when it looked like she would just continue to look at him with wide eyes. “Sorry to bother you this early.”

The woman shook herself out of her stupor, patting her hair self-consciously. “Oh, I’m sorry. Hello. How did you get here? Are you with your parents, or…?”

It was obvious that Five was on his own, but he quashed his impatience. If that woman had housed Vanya for a month after Five had carelessly stranded his sister in time, then the very least he owed her was to be polite. “I’m here on my own,” he said. “Can I come in?”

“Sure,” the woman murmured, stepping aside to let him in. 

Five entered a dining area with at the far back a family room, furnished with a couch, flower-patterned armchairs, and a thick rug on which sat a boy playing with plastic toys. The boy looked up sharply as Five came in and made a small whimpering sound.

“It’s all right, baby,” the blond woman said. “We just have a visitor.”

Five didn’t seem to be the visitor the boy wanted to see, because his head dropped and he went back to playing listlessly with a brown plastic horse, completely ignoring his mother and Five. On the left of the dining area was a kitchen, separated from it by a counter with high kitchen chairs. 

“Sit down, please,” the woman said, gesturing toward the dinner table as she flitted around the kitchen. “Do you want lemonade? Or a juice? My name is Sissy, by the way. I’m sorry, I’m a bit… out of sort this morning.”

Five settled at the table, tired enough that it felt nice to be sitting down. He wanted something stiffer than lemonade, but with a smile that he hoped didn’t look too forced, he said, “A glass of lemonade sounds great.”

Sissy came back from the kitchen and handed out to Five a glass of lemonade so cold it numbed his fingers. He took a polite sip and then put it down on the table. Sissy was looking at him, her fingers nervously playing with the edge of the embroidered tablemat placed at the center of the table. 

“Did you get lost?” she asked. “If you give me their number, I can call your parents for you.”

Five swallowed back a biting retort. “As I said, I came here on my own. I came because of the ad you put up in the paper about a woman who’s lost her memory and is living here with you.”

“You came for Vanya?” the woman said, her eyes welling up. “Oh god. Are you a family member?”

“So this _is_ Vanya,” Five said, leaning forward eagerly. “Is she here? I’m her brother.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Sissy said, covering her mouth with her hand. “Vanya was here, but she—she’s gone.”

Five slumped back in his chair, his stomach sinking. “What do you mean by ‘gone’?”

“I don’t know, she just vanished. It happened yesterday and I’ve been going crazy wondering…” Sissy sniffed and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry I don’t have a better answer for you. Vanya wanted to find about her family _so much._ If only you’d come earlier…”

_If only_. If only Five hadn’t insisted to stop for coffee yesterday, maybe he and Allison could have caught up with Klaus before he disappeared. If only he hadn’t wasted most of yesterday morning on a fugue state, he would have gotten a head start on his search for his siblings and he might have found _one_ of them by now. 

“What happened exactly?” he asked mechanically. If he could get just one clue on how Vanya had disappeared, then at least he wouldn’t have wasted his time coming here. “Did you see anything, hear anything? Was anyone loitering?”

“I didn’t see anyone, no,” Sissy said. “Harlan—that’s my son—was playing with Vanya in the barn. I went there to ask them to come in for the snack I’d prepared when I saw this… big blue light. I ran in and Vanya was nowhere to be seen. Harlan was still there and he was hysterical. It took me hours to calm him down. I’m sorry, I know it doesn’t make much sense but—”

“Wait, your son was with Vanya when it happened? He must have seen something! What did he say? Can I talk to him?”

“My son doesn’t talk,” Sissy said regretfully. “Ever. He won’t be able to tell you anything.”

“But you said there was a blue light, right?”

“Yes.” Sissy gave him a quizzical look. “Why? Does this mean anything to you?”

Of course it did—fucking _time-travel._ So it was the Commission who’d taken his siblings, after all. But why not try to get in touch with him if they wanted to blackmail him? Why send assassins after him and Allison? Unless… Five pressed a fist against his forehead, knuckles digging into his skin, his mind whirling with questions and half-formed theories. What if he’d been looking at this the wrong way this whole time? Maybe the assassins had only wanted to kill _him_ and the Commission had taken his siblings for a purpose that had no relation to him. 

“Shit,” Five swore, gripping the edge of the table. “Allison.”

“What?” Sissy said, puzzled. “You mean her name isn’t Vanya?”

“No, Allison is my other sister’s name,” Five answered absentmindedly. He slapped a hand against the table, making Sissy jump. “Goddamn it, I’m such an _moron_.”

“What—”

“Thank you for the lemonade,” Five said, shoving back his chair as he stood up like a shot. “I have to go.”

He ran out of the house, ran all the way back to the car and drove in direction of South Dallas with no consideration for the speed limit. Anger at himself boiled in his chest, so hot it threatened to consume him. Why was he such an asshole? There might have been nothing he could have done for the others, but if Allison disappeared it would be entirely on him for leaving her alone when he suspected that someone was kidnapping his siblings for an unknown reason. She could defend herself, but so could the others and they’d been taken anyway. 

“Come on, come on,” Five muttered, his foot pushing down on the gas pedal. He hit the wheel in frustration at the way the car struggled to gain speed. “Fuck!” he yelled. 

If Allison had been taken too, he would find a way to get into the Commission HQ and repaint it bloody. 

—-

It was probably a mistake, but Allison hadn’t known what else to do than go back home. She’d paid a visit to Elliott’s store, the only place where she thought Five might have gone, but when she hadn’t found her brother it had been instinctual to go home. At least there she didn’t put anyone else in danger in case more Commission assassins came for her. It was a shock when she tiredly stumbled in and found that Ray was back.

“I thought you were gone,” she said stupidly. 

He’d been sitting on the couch, reading a newspaper. “I was, and now I’m back,” he said, putting his newspaper down on the coffee table and uncrossing his legs.

“Already? You said you needed time to think.”

“I had the whole afternoon to think. And I realized that I didn’t have the leisure of taking too much time to myself. We need to figure this out together before you leave. If I wasted the days we have left with each other and then you were gone forever, I would always regret it. Allison? Are you all right?”

Allison realized she’d started crying and tried to get her tears under control. “We went to check the place we were talking about but our brother Luther was gone too. They’re all _gone_ and I don’t know…”

“Allison, hey.” Without Allison noticing, Ray had gotten up and come over to her. “Did something else happen? Where’s Five?”

“We were attacked by those assassins again. They’re dead now.” Ray wrapped his arms around her and she couldn’t resist huddling against his chest. “I had a fight with Five. I said something awful to him and he left. I don’t know where he is now.”

Burying her face against Ray, she let her tears soak his shirt. Her sobs were part exhaustion, part frustration, part worry for all of her siblings. She didn’t know where any of them were and now she’d even lost Five, the only one she’d found again. Why had she taken out her issues with herself and her powers on him? Five liked to pretend he was above it all, but he had feelings too. She’d screwed up everything with him and now he might be gone again.

“Let’s go to bed, baby,” Ray said as he stroked her hair. “You’re exhausted and so am I. We’ll talk more in the morning.”

“Wait,” Allison said, pushing away from him. “You shouldn’t stay here. The assassins might attack again.”

“You said they were dead.”

“The Commission might send more.”

“Are you sure it’s you they were after and not your brother?”

The thought had occurred to Allison, which was what had fueled in part her anger at Five. But it was just as likely that the Commission wanted to eliminate all of them for time-traveling, and she couldn’t risk it. “I can’t be sure,” she said. “I don’t know what they want exactly. The only person who really know them is Five and he’s not here now.”

“Then we can take turns keeping watch. I’ll wake you up if someone tries to get in and you can stop them with your power. If you were holding back on my account earlier, then I give you full permission to stop assassins from killing us.”

“All right,” Allison said with a sigh, having no energy left to argue the point. 

She thought of all the efforts she’d made to keep herself from using her power to change situations that didn’t suit her. It felt like they’d gone to waste now, but on the other hand, Five was right. As long as people were trying to kill her and might hurt Ray, she didn’t have the luxury to entertain moral qualms. It was a bleak fact that she was born with that power, so she was always left with the choice to use it or not, and in some circumstances not using it might be the selfish choice. She wished she had a more straightforward power, maybe super strength like Luther—though Luther’s straightforwardness hadn’t exactly served him well either. 

The night was short, but thankfully uneventful. Allison took first watch, as despite her exhaustion she felt too wired to sleep, too preoccupied with thoughts of the man she’d killed earlier, the mysterious disappearance of her siblings, her fight with Five. She kept replaying the look on his face right before the blue light of his warping had swallowed him—for an instant, he’d looked so openly hurt that she’d seen a glimpse of the kid he had been so long ago. As a child, Five hadn’t been very good at hiding what he felt, although he’d brashly pretended he was. His anger burned hot, his hurt bled freely, his enthusiasm burst out like fireworks. Now, at fifty-eight, he was a lot more inscrutable; not blank, but wearing a mask of cynicism and annoyance that didn’t let much filter through. His obvious hurt at what she’d said had made Allison realize that she’d bought into the mask more than she should have.

When Ray woke up in the middle of the night and insisted on keeping watch in his turn, Allison dragged herself to bed and fell asleep the way you fell into a black hole. Waking up the next morning was a struggle, but she was pulled out of bed by the smell of eggs and bacon cooking in the kitchen. Too muddled to get dressed just yet, she slipped into her robe and blearily followed the scent of food.

“Morning,” Ray said from where he stood at the stove, shifting the sizzling bacon in the pan with his spatula. “Are you hungry?”

“This smells delicious,” Allison said, hugging him from behind and kissing the nape of his neck. “I’m starv—”

The sound of the front door crashing open cut her off. Allison let go of her husband to grab a kitchen knife, gesturing at Ray to stay out of sight. Pressing herself against the wall next to the doorway, she cautiously risked a look around the doorjamb. When she saw that the intruder was a frazzled Five holding a knife in his hand, she exhaled in relief.

“Jesus, Five,” she said, dropping her knife arm and stepping out of the kitchen. “You scared the shit out of me.”

He looked at her, his eyes like saucers, not lowering his knife. “You’re here,” he said.

“Um, yes. I live here,” she said, approaching him cautiously. His clothes were wrinkled and his face sweaty, as though he’d run all the way here. “Are you all right?”

He seemed to remember he was holding a knife and swiftly put it away, almost as quickly as Diego would have. “I was just… I thought… Well, you’re here, that’s good.”

“You were afraid I’d been taken too,” Allison realized.

“I was _concerned_ ,” he corrected with a scowl, as though the semantic nuance mattered. “But you’re not, so everything is fine.”

“Five?” Ray said, coming up from behind Allison.

“What are you doing here?” Five asked, frowning at Ray.

“It’s still my house,” Ray said, lifting an eyebrow. Allison was rather impressed at how calmly he talked back at Five, even knowing what he was and having seen him barge into the house with a knife. “Are we about to be attacked?”

“Maybe,” Five said, carding his fingers through his hair. “I went to—oh, shit."

He took a step and swayed, pitching forward. Allison rushed to catch him and he slumped against her, his nose in the crook of her elbow. She held him up, worried at how much of his weight he was letting her bear.

“Five?” she called, wondering if he’d passed out until she heard him mumble something. “Come again?”

“I should eat something,” Five enunciated more clearly, detaching himself from her.

“Ray was just preparing breakfast,” Allison said, flicking her eyes at Ray so he would go to the kitchen and get the food. “Come on, let’s sit you down at the table.”

He let her lead him by the elbow, blinking several times as though to clear his vision. Allison drew him a chair and then sat next to him, watching him rub his face, shake his head and blink again, obviously still dizzy. 

“Listen,” Allison said, bracing herself, “about yesterday—”

“Nothing to say,” he grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“I just wanted to—”

“Nope,” he said, his eyes squeezed shut. “We’re not doing this.”

Ray arrived with plates and cutlery in his arms, stopped on the kitchen’s doorstep and turned back around. 

“For god’s sake,” Allison swore between her teeth, “will you let me apologize?”

He opened a bloodshot eye to look at her, then closed it again with a sigh. “You don’t need to apologize. I overreacted. Of course you don’t want to be like me. _I_ don’t want to be like me.”

The bitterness in his tone took Allison’s breath away. “I was angry,” she said. “But I was angrier at myself than at you and it was unfair of me to take it out on you. I shouldn’t have implied that you were—” Something broken, sullied, that she looked at with repulsion. She wanted to take his hand, but they were both hidden under the table, so she went on, “You’re my brother. That doesn’t change. And you were right that I can’t get tied up in moral quandaries right now, not until our family is safe.”

“Yeah, about that,” Five said. “I went to the farm whose address we found in the paper, looking for Vanya.”

Ray came back to set the table and left just as unobtrusively, with a quick glance at Allison to check whether she was okay. She nodded at him and he went back to the kitchen. 

“I guess you didn’t find her, or she’d be here with you,” Allison said, allowing Five the change of subject.

“No, but I learned something interesting—for a certain value of interesting. The woman at the farm, Sissy, said that she saw a flash of blue light before Vanya disappeared. Vanya was playing with some kid in a barn and she disappeared in an instant, to hear Sissy tell the story.”

“A blue light,” Allison repeated. “Shit.”

Ray was back again with the pan, serving Allison and Five’s plates with scrambled eggs and bacon. “Please fill in the Philistine that I am,” he said. “What’s the meaning of that blue light?”

“Time-travel,” Five said. He nudged a bit of egg with the tip of his fork, like he expected it to explode. “It’s what happens when I use my power, and the briefcases used by the Commission agents produce the same sort of bluish glow. I can give you a longer explanation as to why the light is blue rather than any other color, if you want, but it would take a few hours and I’m not sure it’s relevant right now.”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Ray said, filling his own plate and sitting down with them.

“So the Commission took Vanya?” Allison said. “And the others too? What for?”

“I don’t know,” Five admitted, his mouth twisting with distaste at his own ignorance. He had divided his food into smaller portions on his plate and gingerly placed some eggs and bacon in his mouth, chewing it with painstaking care. “If they’d killed Vanya, Sissy would have heard something—and they would have killed the kid, too. He apparently can’t talk, but better safe than sorry is the Commission’s motto.”

“They would have killed the kid?” Ray said, paling. He’d been about to eat a bite of egg and bacon, but he lowered his fork. “Have you… killed kids too?”

Five slanted a look up at Ray, then looked at his food again, the corners of his mouth pulled down. “Anyway,” he said, as though moving on from an unspoken conversation, “I’m fairly confident that Vanya was taken rather than killed—which means that it’s likely the others are still alive too. That’s the good news.”

“And the bad news is that we don’t know where or when they are, or _why_ they were taken, I suppose,” Allison said, between two mouthfuls of her food.

“If it’d only been Vanya, I would assume that they’re trying to replicate the apocalypse, but why bother with the whole litter of idiots?”

“Do you think that—” Allison swallowed her eggs, the thought that she’d just had making food suddenly unappealing. “—that maybe they took them for… leverage against Vanya?”

Five’s face bleached from what little color it had left. “But Vanya doesn’t remember them,” he said weakly.

“Does the Commission know that, though?”

Allison and Five looked at each other for a long moment, their shared fear mirrored in each other’s eyes, until Ray cleared his throat, his knife and fork clanking when he put them down against his plate.

“Okay,” he said, “I don’t know anything about time-travel or the Commission or the apocalypse, but I don’t think you should get caught up freaking out about what is happening to your siblings. The important question is, how can you find them?”

“A good point, Raymond,” Five said, giving Allison’s husband a surprised but appreciative look. “If they were taken by the Commission, then we’ll only learn where they are by finding someone from the Commission to question.”

“Well, we’ll probably have fresh assassins sent after us again,” Allison said. “If we used ourselves as baits and captured one, I could… rumor them to tell us what they know.”

“They won’t know anything,” Five said. “They’re just working bees. However… they could tell us where their briefcase is, and we could use _that_ to infiltrate the Commission’s Headquarter. Under normal circumstances, a Commission assassin would never give away their briefcase. Would you really be willing to…?”

Five’s inquisitive look at Allison must be a concession in light of their argument from the day before. His plan wouldn’t work without Allison’s power, but she appreciated his pretense that she had a choice. He was trying to be considerate, to meet her halfway. 

“Yes,” she said. “If this is the only way to find the others, I’ll do it.”

“Good. I’ll kill them myself, then,” Five said, like it was a transaction between them, and Ray choked on his eggs. 

“Is that really necessary?” he asked between coughs. 

“By taking their briefcase, we’re already sentencing them to death,” Five said. “The worst mistake a Commission agent can make is to lose their briefcase, so you can imagine how much worse it’ll be if they just give it away—trust me when I say that the Commission won’t care that they were forced to do it by Allison’s power. And as I told my sister already, you shouldn’t waste your compassion on them. They would kill us and anyone in their way without the slightest hesitation. To become an assassin working for the Correction Division, you need to have sold your soul first.” 

“Like you did, you mean?” Ray said.

Allison held her breath for Five’s reaction, but his face remained perfectly blank. With his fork he cut in half an already small piece of bacon, ate it and said, “Like I did, yes. I don’t pretend I’m better than them, but what I’m trying to do is to protect my family, while they want to destroy it. If you love Allison, it should be pretty clear which side you should support.”

Five and Ray locked eyes with each other, tension crackling in the air, while Allison wondered whether she should say something. She knew intimately what Ray’s principles were, how strongly he believed in non-violence, and by marrying him she’d embraced those principles too. But there was a deeply rooted instinct in her, stitched to the very fabric of her soul, that wanted to strike back at anyone attacking her family. Fight fire with fire, close ranks around the wounded and retaliate until the threat was neutralized. This was how they’d been raised. 

“I suppose if you let them go,” Ray said slowly, “they would just try to kill you again.”

“Now you’re getting it,” Five said. “Even if we weren’t their assignment, they would never let us get away with stealing their briefcase. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go take a shower now.”

He pushed away his plate, which was still half full, and rose to his feet.

“Won’t you finish breakfast first?” Allison asked. 

“I’m full,” Five said, sliding the plate in her direction. “You can have it.”

When they were kids, any of her brothers offering someone else to finish his food had always been meant as an unspoken message that something was wrong, a cry for help in an environment where weakness wasn’t to be admitted out loud. Before Allison could comment on it, though, Five had left the room—on foot, not using his power, which meant that it was probably still glitchy. Sighing, Allison started to pick at Five’s plate. 

“I’m sorry about all this,” she said to Ray.

“I’m not ashamed to say that I feel completely out of my depth here,” Ray said. “I’m really _trying_ but… You know I don’t believe in violence, even against people who are actively killing us. That’s the whole point of the movement, to be better than _them_.”

“I know,” Allison said. “They really won’t let us live, though. And we have to know what they’ve done with our siblings.”

“This time-traveling assassin business is out of my realm of experience. But…” Ray lowered his voice, which was how Allison knew that he was going to say something about Five. “…doesn’t it bother you that he’s killed children? He all but admitted it.”

“Of course it bothers me,” Allison said. 

She couldn’t think of it without thinking about Claire, and wondering whether Five had killed children her age, and from that her brain conjured a totally non-sensical scenario where Five would have been ordered to kill Claire before he’d come back to them, not knowing she was his niece. He probably would have done it, although, from the look on his face just now, she didn’t think he’d have been happy about it. Allison wasn’t afraid that Five would hurt Claire if she ever introduced them to each other, but it was hard to reconcile the image of her brother, her childhood companion, with that of a cold-blooded child killer. The cognitive dissonance gave her a headache. 

“I can’t be thinking about this,” she said. “I can’t be distracted if I want to save my family. I may not know Five all that well anymore, but I know that’s what he wants too.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Ray said. “I know it’s easy for me to get all moral on you—he isn’t my brother. I know all too well that family isn’t a simple matter. You go get changed, maybe dress your wound again; I’ll clean up here.”

Allison leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “We had a very strange childhood,” she said. “Thank you for being so patient with us.”

His cheek dimpled with a half-smile. “I’ve had a lot of practice with patience. At least there hasn’t been a dull moment those past few days.”

Allison didn’t think her life had ever been dull, but she hoped that things wouldn’t get _too_ exciting. The Umbrella Academy kind of excitement always included a lot of blood and violence. 

—-

Instead of making him feel refreshed, showering only made Five feel more tired, which he knew was a sign that he’d reached a point where only solid hours of sound sleep would help. Sleeping was for when he would know that his family was safe, though. After talking it out with Allison, it was decided that in order to dangle themselves in front of the assassins, the best thing to do was pretend they were still following the tracks of their siblings. The first time they’d been attacked was at Allison’s house, which they’d rather not have happen again, and the second time was when they’d gone looking for Luther at The Carousel Club. Their next logical step would have been to go check the rooming house where Ruby had said Luther was renting a room, so there they went. The Piano Street Rooming House for Solitary Men was a dour little red brick building, and the manager, a bearded man with a round face named Phil, gave them an ill-humored welcome. 

“You friends of his?” he asked, giving them both a dubious look. “He owes me a week’s rent.”

“He’s been gone for no longer than a day, right?” Allison said. “He can pay you when he’s back.”

“Even if he comes back, he’ll have to find somewhere else to room,” Phil said. “He’s on Jack’s shit list since that missed fight and I want to stay out of it. But he still owes me rent.”

“We don’t know where he is,” Allison said. “That’s why we want to check his room, to see if he’s left anything behind that can give us any indication about where he went.”

“I can’t let you go into one of my tenants’ room,” the man said. “This isn’t a five-star hotel, but I can at least grant them privacy.”

“I thought you wanted to throw him out,” Allison said, but before Phil could reply she cut him off. “You know what? Never mind. _I heard a rumor that you took us to Luther’s room._ ”

Phil’s eyes shone with Allison’s power and he turned around, back into the narrow entrance hall. As she followed him inside, Allison glanced at Five and said, “Oh, shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Five said.

“I shouldn’t have rumored him. We don’t even need to get in that badly. We’re just trying to draw the assassins to us. We could accomplish the same thing by fucking walking around town.”

“I’m the last person who would criticize you for using the power you were born with.”

“Yeah, you always liked _your_ power.”

It was only true up to a point, but Five didn’t feel like getting into this now. “You did too, if I recall,” he said, “until you got hit with the consequences.” 

Allison flinched and sucked in a breath like she wanted to reply with something equally cutting, but instead she just let it out slowly, pushing down the hurt—just like he’d told her she should do. 

Oh, goddamn it. Why was dealing with other people such a balancing act, at least when he cared what they thought? As an olive branch, Five said, “But what that asshole wanted was for you to give him money, so it serves him right.”

“That doesn’t mean he deserved to have his will taken away from him,” Allison murmured, eyes on Phil’s back.

“Sure,” Five said. “But if you free him now, he’ll call the cops on us, so maybe don’t do that.”

Phil led them through cramped corridors, whose low tiled ceiling and grey walls made Five feel claustrophobic, so he could only imagine how uneasy they had been for Luther to navigate with his inhumanely broad shoulders. Without a word, Phil stopped in front of a door and unlocked it, then stepped aside to let them in. Five had seen enough of Allison’s puppets during his childhood—and been one himself, when he was picked as a training dummy for his sister—to be unfazed by the sight of Phil’s blank face, but he had to admit that to see the man stand silently by the door like a robot butler might be unsettling to anyone else.

“You go back to your office and take care of your usual business,” Allison told him. “We’ll see ourselves out.”

Phil left, and Five and Allison entered Luther’s room. It was small, something like 30 square feet—smaller than Luther’s bedroom at home. It held a narrow iron-frame bed, a chest of drawer, a desk and a battered leathery armchair.

“Oh, Luther,” Allison said, both of her hands pressing against her mouth. “It’s so—”

— _sad_ , was probably how she meant to end that sentence. The fact that this room summed up Luther’s life since he’d left 2019 was sad, and Five could say this as someone whose worldly possessions had fit in a wagon for over four decades—that had been sad too. He walked to the bed, which was unmade, and looked around at the room, at the books and magazines piled on the desk and on top of the chest of drawers, the shirtsleeve hanging from one of the drawers, the empty duffle bag sagging in the armchair.

“He definitely hasn’t skipped town,” Five said. “He meant to come back here.”

“Well, we knew that, but—”

Someone knocked on the panel of the open door, making Five and Allison both whip around. A woman in her early thirties, narrow-faced, brown-skinned, brown hair cut in a bob, stood leaning against the jamb with her arms crossed. She grinned at them, saying cheekily, “Knock, knock. I thought you might be here.”

“Who are you?” Five asked tensely.

The woman’s right eyebrow shot up. “Is that supposed to be a joke?” She spoke with a British accent and her voice sounded naggingly familiar. 

“Are you with the Commission?” Allison asked, stepping closer to Five.

“If the Handler sent you,” Five said, “then you must know what we did to your colleagues. Tell her I’m ready to negotiate for my siblings’ freedom.”

The woman snorted, uncrossing her arms. “Okay, I’ll bite,” she said. “You’re not that good of an actor, so you’re probably not lying. How come you don’t remember me? I expected _her_ —” She jerked her head at Allison. “—not to remember me, but you always remembered before.”

“Before?” Five repeated, his insides filling with ice. 

“Although you _were_ a bit loopy the last few times. Guess you finally unscrewed whatever screws still held your old man’s brain together.”

“What the _fuck_ are you talking about? The last few times of what?”

The woman’s grin grew wider, showcasing her rows of neat white teeth. “Not gonna lie, this is kind of fun,” she said before dashing at Five. 

—-

There was a fourth unopened door in the corridor, and Diego and Luther were convinced that the room behind it held yet another of their siblings. From the names they’d thrown around, Vanya counted that they had three more. Somehow, she hadn’t pictured herself as part of a big family of six children. She wondered where she’d ranked among them; Luther and Diego looked so close in age from her that it was hard to tell whether they were older or younger. 

“All right,” Diego said, putting one knee down on the floor and pulling out of his pocket a twisted piece of wire. “Give me a second to—”

“This will take too much time,” Luther said, nudging Diego aside and then giving the doorknob a tug. To Vanya’s shock, that simple gesture wrenched the door out of its hinges.

“For fuck’s sake, Luther!” Diego shouted, unperturbed by what Luther had done to the door but incensed that his brother hadn’t let him pick the lock. “I had it under control. I did Vanya’s door, so I could have done this one too! Why do you always have to—”

“This isn’t one of Dad’s skill tests,” Luther said. “I’m not saying you couldn’t have done it, but this way is quicker.”

“And did it occur to you that maybe we’ll need _doors_ if we’re forced to stay here longer?”

Leaving them to their argument, Vanya entered the room with soft footsteps. It looked very similar to the one she’d woken in, except that the picture on the wall was of a mountain landscape, with cows grazing in the foreground. A man was sprawled on the bed; he had long curly hair and a goatee, and wore a striped shirt and tight pants. He pushed himself up groggily, raking his fingers through his tangled curls. 

“Is it morning already?” he said, breaking off into a yawn, then smacking his lips.

“Klaus!” Luther and Diego exclaimed at the same time—so the man was another of their brothers, then.

“Morning, guys,” Klaus said, rubbing his eyes, before he jerked, letting his hand drop to his side. His eyes widened. “Diego? Luther? Holy shit.”

He jumped off the bed, holding his arms out to his brothers. Vanya watched the three of them hug—though Diego broke it off quickly, grumbling under his breath—feeling awkward and out of place. She was happy to have found her family, even under such weird circumstances, but she couldn’t quite share the joy of a reunion with people she didn’t remember.

Finally, Klaus noticed her as he pulled away from Luther. “Oh, hey, Vanya,” he said. His smile was heartwarming after the tenseness of Diego and Luther’s reactions to her, but as he approached her with open arms, his expression faltered. “Is it okay to hug you? Are you going to blow me up?”

“What? How would I even—”

“She doesn’t remember anything,” Luther told Klaus.

“Oh, in that case,” Klaus said before he drew Vanya into his embrace, resting his chin on her shoulder. “Welcome back to the insanity, sis.”

Vanya hugged him back, hesitantly at first and then more firmly. At least someone was happy to see her, though what had he meant by ‘blow me up’? Did she use to have a volatile temper? Unless—Vanya swallowed, remembering Diego’s uncanny aim, Luther tearing a door out like cardboard—Klaus didn’t mean it _figuratively_.

“Okay,” Klaus said, letting go of Vanya and turning toward their brothers. “I don’t remember how I got there and I’m pretty sure I didn’t go on a bender recently. To what or who do we owe this sweet family reunion? Are Five and Allison here too?”

“We don’t know,” Diego said. “We all woke up in one of those rooms. There was a camera in the hallway but I took care of it. We haven’t explored the whole place yet so we don’t know if Allison and Five are there too, though if our kidnappers have managed to get their hand on that slippery old bastard, I’ll tip my hat to them.”

“Slippery old bastard?” Vanya said, looking in askance to Klaus, as the friendliest of her brothers so far.

“That’s Five,” Klaus said. “He’s kind of… an acquired taste, let’s put it that way. Like very strong coffee.”

“Is his name really Five?” Vanya asked.

“Yeah,” Klaus said, giving her a long look that was part amusement, part incredulity. A snort escaped him. “Wow. You really _don’t_ remember anything, do you? I mean, I’ve often wished I could wipe my mind clean of certain parts of our childhood, but that must be so weird.”

He’d said it so cheerfully that Vanya couldn’t help a smile, though there was nothing funny about the situation. “Pretty weird, yes,” she said.

“Speaking of weird,” Luther said. “Doesn’t it seem strange to anyone that they’ve left Diego’s knives with him?”

“They didn’t search you?” Klaus said. “Those guys must be shit at kidnapping. It’s honestly pretty insulting.”

“The knives were on the nightstand,” Diego said. 

“So they left them on purpose,” Vanya said, trying to keep up with the conversation. “Isn’t it, like, an odd move for kidnappers?”

“Very odd,” Luther said. “Klaus, is Ben here?”

“Hey, Diego,” Klaus said, ignoring the question, “what’s with the white outfit? I thought black was your color, and frankly, this doesn’t look—”

“Don’t change the subject, man,” Diego said. “Luther asked if Ben was here.”

“Well, no,” Klaus said, shrugging his shoulders and opening his palms, flashing the words ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ that were tattooed there. “See, it appears that ghosts can’t— _ow._ ” Klaus’ head whipped to the side and he held his cheek, grimacing. “What the hell?”

“What was that?” Diego asked, his eyebrows meeting in a frown. “Klaus, you motherfucker, was that _Ben_?”

“Why, Diego, I’m shocked at what you’re implying about your own—”

“Don’t give me your bullshit! That thing you did at the Icarus theater—that was Ben that we saw, right?”

“Um, who’s Ben?” Vanya asked in a whispered aside to Luther.

“Our brother,” Luther said.

“Another one? Just how many of us are there?”

“Seven,” Luther said, then his face pinched up. “We _were_ seven. Ben is dead, but Klaus can talk to the dead.” When Vanya gaped at him, he elaborated, “We all can do things that are a bit… out of the ordinary.”

Diego throwing that knife without looking, Luther breaking the door effortlessly. “Me too?” Vanya asked in a small voice.

“Yes,” Luther told her very gently, the expression on his face apologetic. “You too.”

Vanya took a breath and felt her lungs expand with it. The room echoed with the sound of her thumping heart. She felt no surprise at what Luther had just said, only the blunt edge of a mind-numbing fear. What had she done, that her brothers were so wary of her? What had she _done_?

“All right, all right,” Klaus was saying, both hands raised in surrender, startling Vanya out of a dark spiral. She choked down on her fears, focusing on what was going on with Klaus and Diego. Klaus looked defensive, holding out both hands as though he wanted to keep Diego away.

“I’ll confess, officer,” he said, the last word thick with sarcasm. “Yes, that was Ben. He’s here and he’s talking my ear off.”

Luther made a soft breathy sound. “He’s here? Right here with us?” he said in a voice too small for a man that big. His eyes darted around the room like he hoped his dead brother would suddenly appear.

“Yeah,” Klaus said with ill-grace. “And you know, I just wanted to point out that he’s not that great when you’re stuck with him 24/7.”

Diego’s eyes were huge, his jaw contracted tightly. His mouth opened and his lips moved soundlessly before he managed to utter, “How long? How long have you been able to see him?”

Klaus’ eyes flicked to the side and he heaved a put-upon sigh. “I summoned him after the funeral,” he mumbled. 

“That long?” Luther said, his eyebrows twisted in a betrayed expression.

“The _whole_ time?” Diego exclaimed. He sounded angry, but Vanya saw that there were tears in his eyes. She didn’t remember this dead brother of hers, but the emotions in the room were so overwhelming that she was affected too, her chest feeling tight with them. “He was there the whole fucking time and you never told us?”

“After the funeral, you guys were all so busy fighting with each other about the mission that it was impossible to talk to any of you. And it’s like, the _one_ perk I get from my powers. I just wanted to—”

“You selfish prick,” Diego said. He advanced on Klaus and fisted the collar of his shirt. “Make him visible. Right now.”

“It’s not that easy to—”

“Don’t you fucking bullshit me, Klaus,” Diego said menacingly. “He just hit you. That means you’re more powerful than before. We haven’t talked to him in _thirteen_ years. Jesus Christ, he’s our brother too.”

“It was more like fourteen years for me,” Luther said roughly. 

Klaus bit his lips, his eyes locked with Diego’s. “Okay,” he said in a soft, fragile voice. “Fine. Let go of me; I’ll do it.”

Diego released him and gave him space, crossing bulging arms over his chest. Klaus sighed and opened his hands, fingers spread, palms turned to the ceiling; as Vanya held her breath, she saw a bluish silhouette materialize, until she could clearly make out a man about their age, with East Asian features and dark hair slicked back, wearing a dark hoodie and a jacket.

“Ben,” Luther said. “You look—you look—”

“I know,” the ghostly apparition said in a curiously echoing voice. “I can’t explain it. I guess Klaus unconsciously made me grow up alongside him.”

“Holy shit,” Diego said. “It’s really you.”

“Hello, Diego,” the ghost—her brother, Vanya told herself, _Ben_ —said with a smile. 

Diego pounced, engulfing his brother in a bear hug. “Holy shit,” he murmured against Ben’s shoulder. “You’re really here.”

Ben looked over to Luther, holding out an arm to him. “C’mere, Luther.”

“I’m sorry,” Luther said, sounding choked. “I’m so sorry about—”

“Don’t be,” Ben said. “It wasn’t your fault. It was none of your faults and Dad was wrong to use my death against you. I never blamed you.”

The sound Luther made ripped something inside Vanya. She watched him join his brothers in a three-way hug, with Klaus standing to the side and looking at them with a wistful half-smile, wiping his nose against a shoulder. Vanya heaved a breath, then another, until they stuttered in her chest like sobs. Her eyes burned and when she blinked, a warm tear trickled down her cheek. 

“Vanya,” Ben said, looking at her over Diego’s shoulder. “I know you don’t remember me, or any of us, but can you come here too?”

It didn’t occur to Vanya to say no, the request revealing in herself a yearning that she hadn’t fully comprehended until now. In a few steps, she crossed the gap between them and wedged herself between Luther and Diego, slipping her arms around Ben. He felt more solid than she’d expected, though his body didn’t produce any of the warmth a real body would have. Stuck between the three men, there was barely any air for Vanya to breathe, and yet she felt herself relax, muscle by muscle, for the first time since she’d woken up. There was still a black veil drawn over her memory, but at least in that very moment, for a few fleeting minutes, she knew she was right where she should be.

“I missed you all,” Ben’s voice floated over her head. “So much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized that I forgot to use Ben's character tag! This oversight has been fixed now.


	7. Chapter 7

The woman attacked Five, focusing on him as though Allison wasn’t there, which was downright insulting. Five blocked her arm, then threw a punch that she dodged, retaliating immediately with a knee. Five jumped back to avoid it and crouched down to kick his foot and sweep her legs from under her. 

Falling against Luther’s bed and giving herself a boost to push away from it, the woman said breathlessly, “What’s up with you today? You’re usually popping all over the place.”

Allison saw the comment throw Five off, his lips parting to suck in a breath, his eyes opening wide, and she decided it was her cue to step in—she didn’t know what was happening, but Five was off his game and this woman looked like she could hold her own in a fight.

“ _I heard a rumor_ ,” Allison said, focusing her power on the woman, “ _that you—_ ”

“— _attacked your brother_ ,” the woman finished for her.

Allison’s breath caught in her throat and a wave of cold spread across her whole body. Her heart was beating madly, pounding in her temples, but her limbs were cold and insensitive, not responding to her frantic orders to punch that bitch in the throat. Then her hand rose, feeling as though it was being pulled by an invisible thread. Her leg took a step toward Five and Allison watched her fist fly at her brother’s face. He ducked and Allison’s hand crashed against the hood of Luther’s desk lamp.

“Al—Allison!” Five shouted. “You can fight this!”

But she couldn’t. Allison’s mind was screaming that this was impossible, that it couldn’t be happening, that it must be a nightmare, while her body punched and kicked at Five. What had that woman done to her? How had she turned Allison’s own power against her? Allison was the one usually pulling the strings, not the reverse!

Five dropped down and slipped under her arm, trying to get away from the corner she’d pushed him in. Allison stabbed her elbow down to hit him, meeting the solid surface of Five’s hunched back. He let out a pained grunt but managed to get away from her, out of her reach. He stepped toward the open doorway, positioning himself so he could keep in his line of sight both Allison and the woman, who was now sitting on the bed, ankle resting on her knee and leaning back on her hands.

“Jump, Number Five!” she shouted. “What are you waiting for?”

“Get a grip, Allison!” Five said, ignoring the woman. “Don’t let that psycho puppet you! It’s _your_ power, for fuck’s sake!”

Five was right, it _was_ her power, and maybe this was just deserts, a rightful taste of her own medicine. She felt like two people, forcibly divorced from each other—on one hand was her mind, begging and shrieking for it to stop, and on the other hand her body, chilled and heavy, moving without her input. It charged at Five, forcing him to step back into the hallway. They fought each other in the narrow space, like they hadn’t done since their sparring sessions with their brothers as children, punch, block, kick, side-step. Five was defending himself more than he was attacking, completely at odds with his usual fighting style, probably because he didn’t want to hurt her—this, combined with his exhaustion and the way his powers malfunctioned, meant that there was a non-zero possibility that Allison would end up seriously hurting him, or worse. _Stop it! Stop it, stop it, stop it._

Five blocked one of her kicks with his upper arm, but the kinetic force of it shoved him against the wall, his head hitting it with a resounding thud. Someone pounded on the other side of the wall and shouted, “Keep it down!”

“Allison,” Five hissed between his teeth, his face glistening with sweat. “Don’t let her win!”

 _Easier said than done! I don’t want any of this!_ she wanted to yell, her irritation overriding for a moment her shock and panic. Her hand moved to punch him but missed his head by an inch, and her knuckles smashed against the wall instead. Allison’s heart stuttered in hope. Five hadn’t had the time to dodge that blow; she’d _missed_ her target. How could she have missed him from so close? She felt her arm muscles contract as it tried to pull away, but her fist didn’t move from the wall.

Five heaved himself upright again, a hand on the wall for support. They looked at each other as Allison remained frozen, fighting herself. Five took his knife out of his pocket, switching it open, but instead of attacking her with it he slipped it up his sleeve. He closed his fist, pulled his arm back, so slowly that his punch was telegraphed in a way that would have made their father tear his hair out. Allison’s arm was shaking from the contradictory orders it was receiving, but she managed to stop it from moving and Five’s fist connected with her jaw. Pain exploded in the side of her face and her ears popped—suddenly, she could move freely and she withdrew her arm back to herself. An understanding passed between her and Five, quick as lightning, and they started fighting again, but this time it was mock fighting, exactly like the sparring they’d used to do.

Allison steadily stepped backward until they were in Luther’s room again. She saw the tip of Five’s blade slide from his sleeve and into his hand, and she ducked in time to get out of the way of him throwing the knife at the woman. It planted itself in her arm and she yelled, falling bad on the bed. Allison leaped to her side, shoving her hand on the woman’s mouth to keep her from using another rumor and Five punched her temple when she started struggling against Allison’s hold. Together, they used Luther’s bedsheets to tie the woman to Luther’s desk chair and gag her. Five’s punch had made her groggy for a couple of minutes, but by the time they’d finished binding her she was fully lucid again and her eyes darted daggers at them.

“Who the hell are you?” Allison asked. “How could you do that?”

One of the woman’s dark brows quirked up and she made a sound behind her gag. Allison cursed under her breath and looked over to Five, asking him silently how they should interrogate a woman who could mind-control them with a few words. Breaking off the compulsion had left her feeling rattled and shaky, her mind racing with a hundred possibilities for things going wrong again. Even now they weren’t safe, as they were simply betting on the fact that this woman’s power followed the same rules Allison’s powers did. Five sighed and retrieved his knife from where it was planted in the woman’s arm. Her scream of pain was muffled behind the gag and her eyes squeezed shut for a second.

“All right, let’s do it this way,” Five said, positioning himself behind the chair and placing the bloody blade against the woman’s throat, which moved as she swallowed. “At the first hint of a rumor, I’ll slit your throat. Are you agreeable to the proceeding?” When she nodded slowly, he said to Allison, “This is as safe as it’ll get. Go on.”

Allison took another second to steady herself before she untied the gag and asked, “Who are you?”

The woman worked her jaw before she answered, “My name is Lila. We’ve met before but you don’t remember it. I mirrored your power—that’s the ability I’ve had since birth. I was born on October 1, 1989, just like the two of you and the rest of the Hargreeves tribe.”

Allison and Five shared a bemused look over Lila’s shoulder. Allison hadn’t known that there were other children like them, and apparently neither had Five, but then their father had hidden so many things from them that it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“So that’s why you wanted me to jump,” Five said. “You wanted to mirror my power, meaning that you can only do it after it’s been used in front of you. Interesting.”

“Are you working for the Commission?” Allison asked.

“I used to, but I had a disagreement with my adoptive mother and left the company. My mother is someone you know very well, Number Five, and she’s out for your blood.”

“The Handler is your mother?” Five asked. “Shit. Does she have my brothers and sister? What has she done with them?”

Lila snorted derisively and rolled her eyes. “Your ‘brothers and sister’. Don’t make me puke. What you call ‘family’ is just a pathetic parody of the real thing. You don’t know what family is.”

Allison clenched her teeth, but there was such a bitter undertone in Lila’s voice, speaking of personal issues, that she managed to restrain the urge to hit her. “I’m guessing your adoptive mother didn’t give you entire satisfaction,” she said caustically. “We might not know about family, but we know about shitty parenting.”

“She was a _good_ mother,” Lila said with surprising defensiveness. “Or so I thought. I thought she loved me, until I realized that all she wanted was my power. But I had real parents until the age of four—before you killed them, Number Five.”

“What?”

“East London, 1993. The flower merchants.”

“I remember them,” Five said, frowning. “It was a strange assignment. The Handler was present for this one, but she—"

“She usually wasn’t,” Lila finished in his stead. “I know. We’ve been through this before.”

“You say you know me,” Five said, his eyes narrowing. “Not just that you’ve heard of me, but that we’ve met before. When? Why don’t I remember it?”

“I hate you,” Lila murmured, looking lost in thoughts for a moment. “But I hate her more. She gave the order to kill my parents; you were just the blunt instrument she wielded, just like she did with me. I hoped the two of you would destroy each other, but you’ve proven to be a cockroach.”

“I’ll take it as a compliment,” Five said dryly. “This doesn’t answer my question, though.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Lila pursed her lips and exhaled loudly, seemingly coming to a decision. “I don’t know if my mother has your siblings. I’m not in the Commission’s need-to-know circle anymore. As far as I’m aware, she’s just trying to kill you. And she has a legitimate reason to do so other than her grudge against you. You’ve been messing with the time-space continuum, probably slowly killing yourself in the process. I can only assume that this is why you don’t remember what happened, because you’re frying your own neurons with all your time-traveling.”

“Wh-what?”

“You’ve been rewinding time over and over again, back to November 15.” 

“Rewinding time? What does that mean?”

“Beats me,” Lila said nonchalantly. “All I know is that you’ve found a new and interesting way to manipulate time and space, and that it makes my mother bang her head against the walls. The problem is that every time, your siblings die, so it’s been rinse and repeat a dozen times by now. I have to give it to you, you’re one stubborn arsehole.”

Five went so pale that Allison was afraid he’d fall, so she held herself ready in case the knife against Lila’s throat faltered. But Five stayed upright and his knife kept steady, though his knuckles had turned white from how hard he gripped it. “You say… they die,” he said in a faint voice. “How? How could I let… What happens?”

“They die in many different ways. I wasn’t there for all of it. I was present the first time, when my mother shot them all in a barn—shot you too, but she didn’t manage to kill you before you could time-travel. A few other times they were killed by Commission assassins or they were shot by the police while they were on the run. Oh, and—that one is pretty funny—there was this one time Diego actually saved JFK, but the failed assassination made tensions escalate between the US and the Soviet Union until the USSR fired the missiles they hadn’t dismantled from Cuba. I was gone by that point, so I didn’t get blasted in a nuclear explosion but I heard all about it. Really, the best for you would be to resign yourself, Five. At this point, it must be clear that it isn’t your family’s fate to survive.”

Allison wanted to laugh at Lila saying that _Diego_ had triggered a nuclear war by saving Kennedy, but the look on Five’s face killed that desire. None of what Lila had said felt real, because Allison didn’t even have a hole in her memory to justify it. She wanted to dismiss it as a joke, but Five didn’t seem to think it was. He looked like someone forced to contemplate his worst nightmare. His jaw was working, as though he struggled to say something, and his breathing sounded too loud, his shoulders heaving with each gasping breath.

“How come that you remember everything and I don’t?” Allison asked Lila, mostly to give her brother a moment to compose himself. 

“The Commission is the organization monitoring the timeline. We have ways to stay out of its turbulences.”

“I thought you weren’t working for the Commission anymore.”

“She has a briefcase,” Five said, his words rough like he’d had to force them out of his mouth. “Don’t you?”

A little _zing_ of hope pinged Allison’s heart at those words. Wasn’t a briefcase what they were after? 

“Yeah,” Lila admitted, shrugging as well as she could with the way she was bound. “But you don’t need a briefcase to time-travel, as you’ve abundantly proved, so what is it to you?”

“I don’t want to go back to November 15. As you said, I’ve done it several times already and it hasn’t worked out. I want to go to HQ. Your briefcase must still have the coordinates saved, right?”

“Why would you go to HQ? I told you I don’t think my mother has your siblings.”

“You said you didn’t _know_. And you must still have contacts at the Commission, otherwise how would you know about what happened during some of the loops you weren’t present for? So your briefcase might not even ping an alarm when it gets there.”

“You’re so clever,” Lila said in a harsh voice that belied her words. “Why would I give you my briefcase, though? I’d be stuck here.”

“For several reasons,” Five said. He was still pale, but his voice was firmer than before. “One, if you don’t do it of your own free will, my sister here will rumor you into it while I keep holding that knife to your throat, so you might as well save yourself the inconvenience. Two, our initial plan was to find an assassin, get their briefcase and kill them, but I’m prepared to just letting you go in exchange for the briefcase.”

“How generous of you,” Lila said. 

“Three,” Five said as though she hadn’t spoken, “you said you wanted me and your mother to ensure each other’s mutual destruction, didn’t you? Well, if I go to HQ, that’ll increase the chances of it happening. What do you think?”

“You make a strong case,” Lila said. 

The sarcasm had eased out of her voice and she looked thoughtful. Allison held her breath, trying to be ready for anything—Lila attempting to escape, Five passing out, someone finally coming to see what the fuss was all about. They couldn’t trust Lila, not really, not when she’d admitted to hating Five and wishing for his death. If Five had killed her parents in 1993 and Lila was born in 1989 like them, then she would have been four when Five had made her an orphan, a little younger than Claire was. This was a good reason for hating someone. Allison would have been on Lila’s side, had Five not been her brother.

“All right,” Lila said, interrupting Allison’s musings. “I’ll give you my briefcase and you let me go. Oh, and if you survive, I’d like to have it back, please.”

“Of course,” Five said. “Now tell us where it is and then take us to it. No funny business, or I’ll cut your Achilles tendons and have Allison rumor the information out of you.”

Allison recoiled at the threat, sick horror rising up her throat like bile. Lila’s eyes flicked up and to the side, like she was trying to glare at Five through the back of her head. “You’re a sick bastard,” she said.

“If the Handler raised you, I bet you’ve seen and maybe done just as bad.”

Lila pressed her lips together and said nothing. Allison, feeling a little numb from everything that had happened and everything they’d learned, untied Lila while watching her from the corner of her eye. The three of them left The Piano Street Rooming House for Solitary Men without seeing Phil again, or anyone else for that matter. This must be the kind of place where the tenants knew better than to poke their noses into others’ business. Five and she could probably have fought each other to the death in the corridor without anyone calling the police. 

Lila told them that she’d hidden the briefcase in the motel room she was staying at, which forced them to take a cab in order to get there. This was probably the most uncomfortable car ride Allison had experienced in her life. Lila sat between them and they had to be careful to keep Five’s knife out of the driver’s sight. Allison had to be on her guard in case Lila tried something, no matter how much her mind wandered to what had happened at the rooming house. Every time the memory of having her body work against her brushed her mind, she felt a surge of revulsion pulse through her, making her feel cold and sick. And Five, though his attention never wavered from Lila, looked like he was faring even worse. His face was still beaded with sweat, even if enough time had passed for him to cool down from their fight. A muscle in his cheek jumped sometimes, and his eyelids twitched, small signs of a far greater storm raging inside. What a pair they made—how could they hope to have a chance at infiltrating the Commission’s Headquarters? They didn’t have a choice, though. They had no other lead on their siblings and the more time passed, the more it gave whoever had taken them the opportunity to kill or torture them.

 _Please be safe_ , was the thought that Allison sent to her siblings. _We’re coming for you._

—-

_Oh, good. You’re still alive. Lucky you. You got to see how this all played out._

“Five?”

He was pretty sure that he’d dreamed of that very moment last night, though he hadn’t remembered any of it until now. Even knowing that it was a memory, the scene still felt more like a nightmare. The Handler’s satisfied smile, the excruciating pain in his chest, the scent of blood—his and his siblings’—filling the entire space of the barn. This was all plucked from the darker parts of his psyche, a cruel joke that fate was playing on him. And more images were pouring in—he saw them fall, one by one in various orders, he saw the blasts of nuclear explosions rushing at them, and at one point he saw what looked like the little boy he’d met at Sissy’s farm, suspended at the center of a whirlpool, his siblings blown away and crushed by its invisible energy.

“Five, can you hear me? Five!”

Five startled so badly that he almost missed a step, which made him realize that he was going down an exterior staircase, holding Lila in front of him at knife point. 

“What?” Five asked brusquely, unnerved to realize that he’d spaced out and Lila could have taken advantage of it to attack them. 

“Are you all right?” Allison asked. 

She stood a bit further down the stairs, holding a black briefcase. So they’d gone to Lila’s motel room and retrieved the briefcase. Right. Five could remember it happening, but the moment between leaving the room and getting to the bottom of the stairs was fuzzy, however many minutes it had been. 

“He’s losing it,” Lila said cheerfully. “I told you, he’s screwed himself up with his time loops. He’s too obstinate for his own sake.”

“You, shut up,” Allison snapped at her. “I don’t need my power to punch you in the face. Are you back with us, Five?”

“Yeah,” Five said, adjusting his grip on his knife, afraid it would slip from his sweaty palm. “Lila, you can go. You’ve fulfilled your part of the agreement, now we’re doing ours.”

“Well, good luck to you two. You sure look like you can take on the Commission.” 

Flicking two fingers at her temple in a mock military salute, Lila sauntered away. Once she was out of sight, Five sat down heavily on the bottom concrete stair, holding his head in his hands. It throbbed even worse than before and his chest felt too tight, each breath feeling like it had to squeeze itself out of his lungs. He heard a swish of fabric as Allison sat next to him. 

“You look terrible,” she said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I don’t know, are _you_?”

He’d meant it as a rebuttal, but Allison answered earnestly, “I’m not sure, no. It was… awful, and to think that I’ve been doing this to people my whole life!”

“It isn’t that bad,” Five said. “I mean, it’s not even in my top ten of bad experiences.”

Turning his head and seeing her look of dawning horror, he realized that it had been a mistake to say this. “I’ve done it to _you_ ,” she said, her voice shaking. “To all of you. I mean—I mean, the training, and _Vanya_ , oh my god, Vanya.”

“That was on Dad, though. Most of it.” 

Their father had forbidden Allison to use her power on her siblings, saying it would affect their teamwork—except during her own training, for which she needed targets to practice on, when apparently teamwork didn’t matter as much anymore. Allison had slipped sometimes, when one of them was annoying her too much, but Five wasn’t one to judge as he felt that if he’d had her power, he’d have used it much more often, Dad’s punishments be damned. 

“And I did it to _Claire_ too,” Allison went on, sounding increasingly upset. “My own daughter. I robbed her of her autonomy, and—"

“Allison, hey.” Fucking hell, why had he asked her if she was okay? He was the worst person to try and comfort someone, which he usually didn’t care about with most people, but Allison mattered. “Really, it’s not… I mean, most of the time you don’t even realize what’s happening. Even knowing what you were doing and how you were doing it, being under the compulsion was always pretty fuzzy for me or for the guys. I guess you experienced it differently because it’s your own power.”

“I’m not sure how it makes it so much better,” Allison said tightly, her arms wrapped around the briefcase on her lap. 

“Well, think of it this way: if someone gets in your way when you need to do something urgent, or if you have to protect yourself or someone else, is it better to have the ability to tell them to walk away or to bash their brains in?”

Allison let out a burst of surprised laughter. “Thank you for that unique perspective,” she said. 

“I don’t know, Allison,” Five said, dragging a hand down his face and shutting his eyes. Even with them closed, his head was still buzzing and he could feel the world reeling under him. “I’m not the best person to discuss morality with. Your husband would be more qualified, so why don’t you ask him about it? Though I’d have to point out that truly terrible people never ask themselves such questions.”

His sister was silent for a protracted moment and her voice was measured when she asked, “Why didn’t you kill Lila?”

“Right now, you mean? I’d promised her I wouldn’t if she behaved. I do have some basic standards, you know.”

“No, I mean—” Allison trailed off, biting her lips. “In 1993. You said that the Commission liked to… tie up loose ends. That they’d have killed the little boy that Vanya was playing with. So why not kill Lila when you killed her parents?”

Five sighed, massaging his throbbing temples with the tips of his fingers. “I’m guessing you hope I will tell you that I spared her because I don’t kill children. That I had a _code_. The truth is, I didn’t know she was there. She must have been hiding somewhere.”

“Would you have killed her if you’d known she was there?”

“Are you asking this because of Claire? I would never—”

“No, I know. Some might consider it naïve, but I know you wouldn’t hurt my daughter. Still, I can’t pretend that it’s nothing to me that you would hurt other children who aren’t her.”

The tightness in Five’s chest had spread to his throat, and it was hard getting the next words out. How had they moved from discussing the morality of Allison’s actions to discussing his? This was a can of worms he’d hoped would remain closed. 

“I didn’t exactly go hurting children left and right for _fun_. The only children I’ve… they were assignments. I’ve never gunned down a kid just because they’d seen something they shouldn’t. Would I have done it if the situation had arisen? I don’t know!”

“All right, I’m sorry! I know I’ve done bad things too and can’t really cast judgement on anyone, but I can’t help thinking about it. Nevertheless…” Allison took a deep breath. “I meant what I said earlier. You’re my brother. It matters.”

“I don’t want that life anymore,” Five mumbled, but it sounded weak that he would say this now, as though he were trying to regain Allison’s approval. “I just want to get our family back.”

For a moment, Allison didn’t say anything, the silence between them filled by the rumble of the cars driving up and down the road running alongside the motel. The cold stair Five was sitting on numbed his butt and he desperately wanted to lie down on a flat surface.

“I want that too,” Allison said softly. “On that subject, are you sure you’ll be all right to go to the Commission Headquarters now? I know that we shouldn’t waste time, but you look—”

“A few hours of rest won’t make much of a difference and that’s all we would be able to spare. It’s better to go now while I still can—” Stand. Fight. String two sentences together. 

“What’s the plan once we’re there?”

“I’m betting on the fact that this briefcase hasn’t been struck off the registry,” Five said, feeling it easier to speak and breathe now that they’d moved away from fraught topics. “However, the briefcase will still be tracked. It’ll leave us a very narrow window before they start looking for us.”

“Enough for us to find the others?” Allison asked, sounding doubtful. “What if they aren’t there? What if they’re detained somewhere else or have been kidnapped by other people?”

“We won’t have enough time to search Headquarters for them, which is why it’s not what we’ll do. I’ve started to…” He grimaced, the bloodiest parts of his recovered memories immediately battering his mind. “…remember some things about the time loops. I remember that the Handler has taken over the Commission by force and, more interestingly, that there are people who oppose her. If we can talk to those people, they might agree to help us and tell us if the Handler has our siblings, and where she’s keeping them if she does.”

“That’s a lot of ‘if’,” Allison said. “But I suppose there is no better plan. So we should—”

“Hey, both of you!”

Five and Allison looked over to where the voice had come from, seeing that a bulky white man with a balding head had just pushed the glass door of the motel’s lobby and stuck his head out to scowl at them.

“Why are you loitering? No one but the motel’s clients can go there! Go away before I call the cops!”

“Come on, let’s go,” Allison murmured, pulling at Five’s arm. 

“Sure you don’t want to rumor that asshole?” Five answered in the same tone.

Allison’s lips twitched as she contained a smile. “Please don’t tempt me.”

—-

Allison and Five had only been gone for a couple of hours, but Ray was already beside himself with nerves. He had other things to think about, like organizing the sit-in at Stadtler’s on Sunday, but even though it was only in a couple of days, it felt so unbelievably far away that it was hard to focus on it. Maybe Allison would be gone by Sunday, back to 2019, maybe she would be _dead_. She and Five had spoken of using themselves as baits for the assassins so casually that Ray hadn’t thought he could object, but now he couldn’t stop imagining the police knocking on his door and announcing that they’d found his wife’s dead body riddled with bullets, along with the body of an unidentified teenage boy in shorts. 

Around lunch time, he found himself listlessly chopping onion and pepper in the kitchen, wondering if he should make enough for Allison and Five. They’d given him no indications on when they might be back, but whenever they did, they would probably be hungry. Ray grabbed an extra onion, his chopping knife descending more quickly on the board, letting the repetitive _clack-clack-clack_ calm his thoughts to a buzz. This was when he heard a whooshing sound coming from the living room; glancing toward the doorway, his eye caught a receding flash of blue light.

His heart beating hard, Ray very gently put his knife down on the chopping board. Were the assassins back? Last time, they’d knocked on the door, but nothing kept them from changing their method and Five had said that the blue flash was typical of time-travel. Taking a sharp breath, Ray took hold of his knife again. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, but those masked assassins weren’t people who could be reasoned with. Creeping toward the kitchen doorway with his knife close to his chest, Ray felt ridiculous, like he’d put on an ill-fitting costume. Allison had looked so much more at ease doing the same thing.

Flattened against the wall next to the opening, Ray wasn’t sure what to do next. He couldn’t just spring out of the door, because if the intruder—or _intruders_ , plural—had a firearm, then he would only get himself stupidly shot. Should he wait until they passed the door and… what, stab them? Ray had punched people in his youth, but he’d never stabbed anyone. Holding his breath, he tried to focus on the noises from the living room and see if he could make out how many people there were and what they were doing. He could only hear one pair of footsteps, which was good, then the intruder cleared their throat and said, “Hello?”

The voice was male, rather high-pitched, and the tone was mild and polite. Not what Ray would have expected from an assassin, but appearances could be deceiving. Maybe the man was trying to lull him into a sense of false safety. With that in mind, Ray abstained from answering and gripped his knife with both hands. 

“Mr. Chestnut? I know you’re there. Or, well, I’m pretty sure you’re there—and if you’re not then I’m talking to myself, which is a bit embarrassing.” A nervous chuckle. “Can you come out so we can talk? I swear I don’t mean you any harm.” A pause. “If I were an assassin, I would just have shot you through that wall.”

It might still be a trap to make him drop his guard, but in that case it was working. The previous assassins hadn’t talked at all, much less tried to trick him. If the man knew that Five and Allison weren’t there, then what did he even want from Ray? Reluctantly, Ray came out of the kitchen.

“Thank you, Mr. Chestnut. It’s more comfortable like this.”

Ray let his arms drop at the sight of the intruder. This wasn’t what he’d expected at all. “Uh, sorry, but… Who are you? What do you want?”

“Oh, my name wouldn’t mean anything to you. As for what I want… I’m here to—how should I put it?” The man grimaced. “Kidnap you, I suppose? Something like that?”

—-

“All right,” Diego said. “Planning time. So we should do a sweep of—”

“I’ve already visited the whole building,” ghostly Ben said. When Diego stared at him, he pointed out, “I’m a ghost, remember? I can go through walls.”

They were sitting in a circle on the floor of Klaus’ room, like kids at a campfire, or at least how Vanya imagined kids at a campfire. She wondered if they’d gone camping when they were children. If they had, in the short time she’d known her brothers she’d learned enough about them to imagine that it must have been a chaotic experience.

“Okay, this is pretty cool,” Diego said, frowning as though it pained him to admit it. “So, what did you find? Are Allison and Five here too?”

“I found nothing, unfortunately,” Ben said. “Allison and Five aren’t there— _no one_ is there. This is the second floor. On the first floor, there is a kitchen, a living room and a toilet. The whole house is barely furnished, but there is food in the kitchen. There are more cameras downstairs.”

“If no one is keeping us here,” Luther said, “then can we just… leave? This seems too easy.”

“The doors might be locked,” Vanya said.

“Not that it would stop Luther,” Diego said, with a sardonic eyebrow wriggle at his brother.

“I couldn’t tell if the doors were locked,” Ben said. “With Klaus being unconscious, I couldn’t touch anything. But I’ve been in the garden and there’s… something strange behind the hedge.”

“Strange how?” Klaus asked. He’d acted pretty subdued since he’d started making Ben visible and this was the first time he’d spoken up.

“I tried to go through it, because I wanted to see what was outside the property, but I couldn’t. Something was stopping me, like… a force field or something. I don’t know. Also, there is no gate. The house is surrounded by a lawn, then an uninterrupted hedge.”

“That makes no sense,” Diego said. “How did they get us in here?”

“So we’re well and truly trapped,” Klaus said with a sigh. “This feels like a rather typical day for the Umbrella Academy.”

“The what?” Vanya asked. 

“Oh right, you don’t know about the Umbrella Academy.”

“Maybe we should… tell Vanya everything,” Luther said, giving his brothers a look that was probably meaningful to them but was lost on Vanya. “So she’s on the same page as all of us.”

“Everything?” Klaus repeated, one side of his mouth twisting into a grimace.

“You sure about that, big guy?” Diego said to Luther.

“Listen,” Vanya said. “I’m not stupid, all right? I can tell that I must have done something really awful that you’re afraid to tell me. I’m ready to hear it.”

“It wasn’t just you,” Luther hurried to say. “It was also us— _me_.”

“We could say it was a team effort,” Klaus said.

“Whatever it is, you can tell me. I’d really just rather know. I can take it.”

“It’s kind of a lot, though,” Klaus said. “Our life story is… comic book worthy. Hell, we actually _had_ comic books made about us.”

“Maybe we could each tell a bit one after the other,” Ben said. “Like we did when we were kids and were making up stories together.”

“Great idea,” Luther said. “Klaus, how long can you maintain Ben?”

“It used to be a strain but not so much now. I think the longest I’ve done it is half-an-hour, but I could probably go a bit longer. About that—before we start recounting the whole Hargreeves disaster to Vanya, I wanted to…” Klaus’ shoulders pulled back as he straightened from his slouch, seeming to brace himself. “I’m sorry that I—” He made a vague twirling motion with his hand and cleared his throat. “—didn’t tell you about Ben when we were kids. And earlier.” 

“It’s fine,” Diego said gruffly.

“Sorry to you too, Benjamin.”

Ben’s half-smile looked eerie on his glowing face. “Such character growth, Klaus,” he said. “I’m proud.”

“See what I mean?” Klaus said to the others with a wet smile. He sniffed. “He’s become such an asshole.”

“Shall we start?” Luther asked.

“Oh, let me start!” Klaus said, clapping his hands, suddenly chipper even though his eyes were still teary. “Once upon a time, there were seven little children who were all born on October 1, 1989 with extraordinary powers. An eccentric billionaire, Reginald Hargreeves, took his monocle around the world to adopt them—or rather, buy them from their families, which I guess is the same thing for rich people.”

“And then he gave us _numbers_ ,” Diego said, spitting the last word, “because he couldn’t be assed to think of names for us.”

“You were the only one who didn’t have a power, Vanya,” Luther said. He was sitting opposite from Vanya in the circle and took up the space of two solidly-built men. “Or so we thought for most of our childhood.”

One after the other, Vanya’s brothers told her the strange story of their childhood spent isolated in a vast mansion, of how her father had kept her medicated and suppressed her power, leaving her out of the superpowered team her siblings formed during their teenage years, until finally they got to the part where Vanya had destroyed the world with her newly discovered power. 

“Vanya?”

Ben’s voice sounded distant through the bubble of numb shock surrounding Vanya. It was too much at once to take in; instead of the horror she should be feeling, she was mostly dazed.

“You say… I destroyed the world. All life on earth.”

“Well, to be more specific,” Luther said, “you blew up the _moon_ , and it was the moon that—"

“Because I was angry.”

“You had good reasons to be angry,” Luther said. “I know that I didn’t help by—”

“Enough to kill everyone? You said I slit our sister’s throat because we had an argument! I just—I didn’t think I was capable of something like that.”

“Vanya, hey,” Ben said, resting his bluish hand on top of one of her own. It felt too light, like a piece of cloud brushing against her hand. “I know this is a lot. You don’t have to process all of it right now. We just want you to know that… we’re still your family. Right, guys?”

“Of course,” Klaus said.

“Yes,” Luther said gravely. 

For a moment, Diego didn’t say anything, but when Vanya looked at him, he sighed and said, “Yeah, sure. A lot happened that day we aren’t proud of. If this family is good at anything, it’s fucking things up. Welcome to the Hargreeves.”

Diego ended his tirade with a smile—it was slanted, sardonic, but a smile nonetheless, which made Vanya smile in return. Ben was right; she couldn’t have a meltdown about everything right now, because they had to deal with their kidnapping situation. And to be absolutely fair, Vanya still felt mostly numb about what her brothers had revealed to her. Intellectually, she knew she was supposed to be horrified, but the opaque fog that enveloped her memories also muffled her feelings about what had happened. She didn’t doubt that it _had_ happened, despite how extraordinary it sounded. Everything her brothers had said resonated with her like déjà-vu, an echo of familiarity, but she felt a little divorced from it. Really, what upset her the most about this was that she should be _more_ upset. What sort of person was she, to be able to shrug off something like this?

“Can we go back to talking about the little fact of our kidnapping now?” Diego said. He’d taken a knife out of god knew where and started flipping it, but it looked more idle than threatening. “When were you guys taken? For me it was during the night between November 15 and 16.”

“Morning of November 16 for me,” Klaus said. “Oh hey, by the way. Guess who I met that morning: our brother-in-law! Allison got married, apparently.”

“What?” Luther said in a strangled voice. His face went pale, then red. “Married? To who?”

“His name is Raymond Chestnut. Stand-up guy, very handsome. Used to be a professor—literature or something fancy like that.”

“He seems nice,” Ben said. “Sorry, Luther.”

Diego patted the back of his brother’s massive shoulder, while Luther stammered, “Good, good, it’s—it’s good.”

Vanya, feeling like she was missing something, turned a confused look toward Klaus, who mouthed at her, ‘ _I’ll explain later._ ’

“I think I was taken in the afternoon of November 16,” Vanya said, going back to their initial topic before Luther spontaneously combusted.

“Me too,” Luther said, giving her a grateful look. “Though it was closer to the evening. I was going to… work.”

“Work? What kind of work?” Diego said.

“Why does it matter?” Luther said with a surprising note of defensiveness.

“It’s the way you said it,” Klaus said laughingly. He mimed quotes with his fingers. “’Work’. Are you doing anything you wouldn’t admit to daddy, Luther? Are you selling your booty?”

“What are you even… Shut up, Klaus.”

“Don’t worry, they’re always like this,” Ben said to Vanya, looking at his brothers with a small fond smile. “Guys, can we get back on track? These kidnappers managed to get the drop on all of you in the span of a day. This isn’t the action of one or two people. This is an organization.”

“You mean, like those lunatics Five used to work for?” Klaus said. “By the way, Ben, did _you_ see anything when I was kidnapped? I was drugged, but you weren’t.”

“Well, not really,” Ben said, looking embarrassed. “It was after we’d left the hairdresser and I wasn’t really paying attention to you, when I suddenly I felt… like I was being sucked into a funnel.”

“Some ghost guard dog you make,” Klaus grumbled.

Ben flipped him off and continued, “Everything was really fuzzy for a while, and by the time I was fully aware of my surroundings, we were both in the room where you woke up and there wasn’t anyone else around. It felt like the time you time-traveled to Vietnam. That was disorienting too.”

“Sounds like the Commission,” Diego said, twirling his knife with added intent.

“If the Commission kidnapped us,” Luther said, “it must be to use us against Five. This explains why Five isn’t here, but where is Allison?”

“I didn’t know about the Commission until five minutes ago,” Vanya said. “But how does it make sense to leave weapons with a hostage?”

“Maybe—” Diego started saying, but he was interrupted by a crashing sound that came from downstairs. A second knife appeared in his other hand and he leaped to his feet. “What was that?”

“I thought this kidnapping was pretty boring so far,” Klaus commented, “but hey, look, things are getting exciting! So what do you think: friend or foe?”


	8. Chapter 8

Five’s knees buckled on arrival, and he would have taken a nosedive had his sister not grabbed his sleeve and held him back. He didn’t feel as bad as when he’d jumped himself, but the time and space travel using the briefcase still left him too dizzy to pay attention to his surroundings, which was his only excuse for not realizing right away that there was someone in the room with them. 

“Who are you?” the person asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen any kid hires for the Correction Division.”

Five sluggishly redirected his attention from his internal discomfort to the person who’d spoken, a thin blond woman, barely any taller than Vanya, who wore the black suit that served as a uniform for Commission assassins. Five didn’t think he’d met her before, but as they exchanged a look of mutual appraising, the woman’s eyes widened in recognition.

“Holy shit,” she said, “you’re—”

Cursing inwardly, Five shoved his hand in his pocket to retrieve his knife, but his sister was quicker to react. “ _I heard a rumor that you forgot we were there and walked away._ ”

The woman’s eyes turned milky white and she left the room with robotic movements—a bit of an unfair term, as their robot mother had always moved with the grace of a ballet dancer.

“Christ,” Five said, dropping on a chair that was right next to him. They should be moving before anyone else came in, but he needed a moment. “Thanks,” he remembered to say to Allison—given how she’d been on a near breakdown over her power not so long ago, he shouldn’t take her use of it for granted.

“Where are we?” Allison asked, ignoring his thanks. 

His vison was still swimming a little, but Five took the time to look around at the unfamiliar room. It had been set like a waiting room, with leather-padded chairs along the walls, a table in a corner that held a coffee maker and a few cups, and on the wall a poster that said, ‘The Commission needs STRENGTH. Don’t be the WEAK LINK,’ the slogan framing the drawn silhouettes of uniformed people standing with their hands on their hips. Right above the lintel of the door the woman had used, was a sign with the word ‘ARRIVAL.’

“I’ve never seen this room,” Five said. “Back when I was working for the Commission, assassins rarely visited Headquarters. I guess they must have changed protocols. They’re keeping them on a tighter leash.”

“And how long ago was that, exactly?” Allison asked. 

“Ten days for me, probably much longer for them,” Five said, massaging his forehead and dragging himself up. “With the Handler at the lead, a lot must have changed from how it was during my days.”

There was another door between two chairs, probably leading to a communicating room. Five pressed an ear against the panel, holding his breath for a few seconds, and when he was reasonably sure that there was no one in the other room, he quietly turned the doorknob and opened the door a sliver. The room on the other side looked almost identical to the one he was in, except that there was no coffee maker and the sign above the door read ‘DEPARTURE.’

Five closed the door and turned to Allison. “These rooms must be used for the assassins to leave and arrive with the briefcases. Meaning that they must be monitoring the arrivals and departures.”

He walked to the table with the coffee maker. The pot was half full, and the cups were divided between the dirty ones piled together, and some clean ones that were turned upside down. Five grabbed a cup and poured himself coffee.

“If they’re monitoring arrivals, they’ll know we’re here,” Allison said, sounding alarmed. “Shouldn’t we get the hell away from this room?”

“They know someone is there, but not necessarily that it’s us,” Five said. He downed his cup, not taking the time to savor it even though Commission coffee was the first he’d tasted, making it an almost nostalgic flavor for him. He added the empty cup to the dirty pile and said, “Now we can go.” 

They opened the ‘ARRIVAL’ door cautiously and peered into an empty corridor. The floor was linoleum and the white paint on the walls flaked in some spots, so they mustn’t be anywhere near Management. When the Handler had given Five a tour a week ago, Five had made a mental map of the compound’s layout, as detailed and three-dimensional as he could make it. He was good at spatial cognition, so it must be pretty accurate. He hadn’t mapped out the buildings with any specific nefarious plan in mind at the time, it was just a habit he had whenever he went somewhere new. Being able to orient himself correctly was key to using his powers. But in order to figure out where he should go, he needed to have a clue on where he was, and so far this looked like a place that he’d either never visited, or that hadn’t existed the last time he’d come.

“Coast is clear,” he told Allison. “Let’s have a look around, see if I can locate us.” 

They walked the empty corridors while Five kept an eye out for anything that looked familiar. Footsteps echoed at some point, trailed by muffled conversation, and they had to make a rash turn into another corridor to avoid bumping into anyone. They shouldn’t have Allison rumor too many people, both for practical reasons and for her own peace of mind. They found a staircase and went down out of necessity—they appeared to have landed on the last floor—which got them to a new set of corridors.

This time the walls were made of brick and lined with framed picture of galaxies and stars exploding. “I know where we are,” Five said. “This is the wing where the orientation rooms are. All right, I know which way is Management.”

“Who are we looking for again?” Allison asked as she followed him down another flight of steps. “Some resistance fighters?”

“Someone I know in Management,” Five said, gripping the handrail for support. It was annoying, but he still didn’t feel entirely steady. “The first time… the first loop, I guess, Diego managed to find himself briefly hired by the Commission—seriously, don’t ask—and got involved with some employees who weren’t happy with the Handler’s new rule. I know a couple of them. The one I want to talk to is actually the manager who handled my own case when I broke my contract and jumped to 2019.”

“Wait,” Allison said, stopping in the middle of the staircase. “You mean they’re the person who ordered a kill on you? And you trust them?”

“‘Trust’ is a very relative term. I trust that our motivations will align, that’s all. Besides, she was just doing her job.”

“Oh, in that case it’s fine,” Allison said sarcastically. 

Five shushed her, because he could hear people coming up the stairs, the sharp clicks of woman’s heels and the duller sounds of men’s shoe soles. Five signaled Allison to backtrack, but as they started to climb up the stairs, more echoed conversation reached them. They were caught between a rock and a hard place. Allison could maybe pass as a Commission employee, but Five couldn’t, even if he wasn’t recognized. With two sets of people coming from two different directions, they couldn’t count on Allison being able to rumor everyone.

“Shit,” Five hissed between his teeth, before he grabbed Allison’s hand, pulling her to him and jumping both of them away.

His knees hit cold tiled floor and he doubled up, the urge to puke overcoming him. He felt hands circle his arms and babbled urgently, “The toilet, quick, I need—”

Allison directed him toward the toilet and he grabbed the porcelain with both hands, bending over it. He threw up until he had nothing left to vomit but bile, his stomach contracting with agonizing spasms. Allison drew circles on his back with her hand the whole time; it made him feel like a child, because this was what Grace had used to do when they were little and sick, but there was a soothing rhythm to it and Five was too tired to protest the comfort. Eventually, the spasms subsided and he flushed the toilet. 

“Did you choose this toilet as a landing spot because you knew you would be sick?” Allison asked. 

“Two birds, one stone,” Five said hoarsely, cleaning his mouth with toilet paper and dragging himself to sit with his back against the wall. “We’re also on the floor where Management is. I wanted to avoid using my power to get there, but there was no other choice. It’s a good thing this toilet was empty.”

“What’s happening with your power?” Allison asked, wrapping her arms around herself. Her expression was unhappy, her eyebrows meeting in a frown. “Lila said that… that you were killing yourself with it. Is that true? Are you going to die if you keep using it?”

“Space jumps are different from time jumps,” Five said, looking at his sister and trying to decrypt what had her so upset. “The former is a lot less taxing on me than the latter, because I’m much more used to it and the basic principle of it is less hazardous than time-travel.”

“You did one jump and were ill,” Allison argued. “I don’t remember you being sick like that after training when we were young, even when Dad worked you hard.”

“I think it’s like a strained muscle,” Five said, using the edge of the toilet bowl as a prop to pick himself up. The world rippled nauseatingly at the edges as he did so, but at least he didn’t throw up again. Small favors. “Space jumps pull at it too so it gets uncomfortable.”

“I’m pretty sure that walking on a strained muscle doesn’t help anything,” Allison said. “That if you keep doing it, you can end up injuring yourself worse, maybe permanently.”

“I’ll avoid using it unless I can’t,” Five said. “Come on, it’s almost lunch time. It’s the right moment for us to catch the person I’m looking for.”

—-

Lunch time was announced by a strident bell that echoed in the corridors, causing people to spill out of the rooms in a long uninterrupted flow, while Allison and Five hid in what looked like an empty classroom—what Five called an ‘orientation room.’ There was a bulky video projector and posters on the walls—sets of rules, instructions in case of a fire, an organization chart of the Commission’s personnel. Five surveilled the corridors through the thin gap of the ajar door, until he presumably saw the person he was looking for, calling in a strained whisper, “Psst, Dot! Here. I’m right here. Come in.”

He ushered a woman inside the room and closed the door behind her. The woman wore a straight grey dress with a Peter Pan collar, and she had light brown skin and impeccably coiffed curly hair. “Five!” she fretted, her hands fluttering. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here. That was absolutely not… I wasn’t expecting it. What if the Handler—”

“Dot,” Five said firmly, interrupting her babble. “I’ve come here to ask you a question: does the Handler have my siblings? They’ve all been picked up one after the other from the year 1963—and for at least one of them a flash of blue light has been seen on site. But I can’t figure out why the Handler wouldn’t have contacted me by now if she had my family.”

Dot stared at Five, blinking, her painted red lips opening and closing soundlessly, then looked over to Allison. “Hi,” Allison said in the awkward silence that followed. “I’m Five’s sister.”

“I know,” Dot said. “You’re Number Three.”

“I prefer Allison,” Allison said, frowning. 

Of course the time-traveling, seemingly all-knowing organization who’d hired her brother would know who she was, but it still made a chill creep down her spine to be identified like this. Dot looked so normal, or at least normal in a plucked-from-the-1950s kind of way, not like someone who emotionlessly ordered other people’s deaths and knew all about Allison’s life. 

“All right, Allison,” Dot said, with a broad smile that showed all her teeth. She seemed calmer now, having overcome her shock at seeing Five. “Nice to meet you.”

“Dot, what about my siblings?” Five asked impatiently. “If you don’t know anything, then my sister and I need to get out of here as fast as we can.”

“I know where your siblings are,” Dot said. She spoke slowly, as though she was considering her words carefully. “But you need to leave quickly. You shouldn’t be here. The Handler has been hounding for your blood for weeks.”

“No shit,” Five said. “Where are they? Is the Handler detaining them somewhere?”

“I—” Dot wrung her hands together. “I know what I’ll do. I’m going to get you a briefcase with the coordinates in it. Yes. Yes, it’s the best option. You wait here until I’m back. There are no orientation sessions scheduled here until 2pm.”

Pointing a finger at them like a schoolteacher asking her students to stay put, she walked backward out of the room and shut the door. Allison sighed and leaned against one of the desks, watching Five pace agitatedly across the space between the first row of desks and the blackboard. 

“Are we really going to stay here and wait for her?” she asked. “How well do you know that woman?”

“As well as I know anyone,” Five muttered, glaring at the floor.

“What if she’s gone to get the Handler, or new assassins?”

“I remember bits and pieces of the different time loops, and each time I’ve come across Dot during one of them, she was always working against the Handler. Why would she give us away now?”

“Maybe she’s just tired of resisting? Those time loops amount to, what, a month of linear time?”

“Something like that. I still can’t—” Five waved his hand. “—fully put all of it back together.”

“Well, maybe Dot couldn’t handle the pressure of rebelling against her boss for a month. Did you notice that she didn’t say if the Handler had our siblings? Just that she knew where they were.”

“I noticed, yes,” Five snapped. He paused for a second, resting a hand on a desk, long enough for Allison to wonder if he was still feeling sick, before he resumed his pacing. “I do have more than two neurons connecting at any given time. But what if she _does_ know where the others are? We’re risking a lot by coming here and we cannot leave empty-handed.”

“I could rumor her to make sure that she’s telling us the truth,” Allison said. 

Five stopped his pacing to look at her. “You shrugged off pretty quickly your moral panic about ‘taking away other people’s free will.’”

“I don’t like doing this,” Allison said tightly, unsure as she did whether she was being earnest or not. Did she _want_ to rumor that woman? She’d forgotten during the past two years how much smoother it made everything to be able to rumor people, and now she was getting a taste of it again. “But I like even less the idea of accepting that briefcase and letting it take us to an unknown location, without knowing if we can trust the woman who gave it to us.”

“Oh, I have nothing against you doing this,” Five said, raising his hands. “Be my guest. I just hope you won’t regret it later.”

“If I regret it, then it’ll be my burden to bear.”

Dot came back at that moment, cutting that conversation short. She was breathless, as though she’d been running, and was holding in her hands a briefcase identical to the one that had brought Allison and Five here. 

“I did as quick as I could,” she said, grinning at them excitedly. “This will take you to—”

“ _I heard a rumor that you couldn’t lie to us._ ” The power of Allison’s voice made the air vibrate around her and Dot. “Now, be honest: is that briefcase really going to take us to our siblings?”

“Yes,” Dot said. Now that the flash of white had faded from her eyes, she looked alert, fully cognizant of what was happening. “But—”

“Is the briefcase going to send us right into a trap?”

“No, but I can’t—”

“Are you working for the Handler?”

“No! Please, it’s really better if you see it for yourselves. Once you’ll see your siblings, everything will make sense.”

“What? What do you mean?”

Dot pressed her lips tightly, not answering, and Allison cursed herself. She should have worded her rumor differently, because as it was now, she couldn’t force Dot to answer her questions. She could add another layer of rumor on top of the first, but with the way Dot was obviously aware of what Allison was doing, this felt like more coercion against someone who’d accepted to help them than what Allison could justify to herself. 

“All right,” she said. “We’ll take the briefcase.”

Freed from the compulsion, Dot gave Allison another broad smile, as though the previous moment hadn’t happened. “Excellent,” she said. “But you must take it to the departure room to be able to use it. Security has been tightened here since… well, since Five has blown up a few important rooms, and it’s impossible to use a briefcase outside of the departure room. You should hurry—soon enough, security will be looking everywhere for you.”

She’d said it so cheerfully that it took Allison a second to process the words. “Did you rat us out?” she asked angrily.

“Oh, no!” Dot exclaimed, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t! But the moment you landed in the arrival room, you appeared in the system. Assassins have to go to registration as soon as they arrive; since you didn’t, an alarm should be rung in about—” An alarm blared outside of the room, punctuated by the word ‘ _Intruder!_ ’ repeated in a loop. “—well, right about now!”

“Shit,” Five said, snatching the briefcase out of Dot’s hands. “You couldn’t have told us about it sooner?”

He darted at the door and Allison followed, trailed by Dot’s chipper, “Good luck!”

They strode down the corridors, while a blinking red light accompanied the siren and the insistent litany of ‘ _intruder, intruder, intruder!’_ Even though they hadn’t come across any security service or armed troop yet, the light and the noises increased Allison’s stress levels to a critical point until she wanted to scream at the alarm to shut up.

“How far are we from the room?” she yelled over the siren.

_‘Intruder, intruder!’_

“It’s in a completely different wing, so pretty far!”

“Shit!”

“You don’t say!” At the intersection between two corridors, Five stopped so abruptly that Allison almost ran into him. “Let’s not go through here.”

“Why not?”

“Over there is the tube room. Which I blew up some time ago, so the security is probably airtight.”

They backtracked, their pace speeding up until they were almost running, but the stomping of thick-soled shoes reached them and Five stopped again with a string of curses. Each blare of the siren was like a punch in the eardrums. _‘Intruder, intruder!’_ Allison’s heart thumped against her ribs, echoing it. She curled her hands into fists, getting ready to fight, but Five circled a hand around her wrist.

“Five,” Allison said, understanding what he was about to do, “no, don’t—”

She was swept into the whirlpool of Five’s warping before she could finish that sentence. In the space between one second and the next, she had no point of reference, no sense of up and down, nothing to hold onto but the feeling of Five’s hand on her wrist. It felt like being thrown into the void of space and then being yanked back onto the ground, the pressure high enough to break bones. It was dark where they crashed and Allison hit her head against something, a wall or the floor. Her stomach doing summersaults, she tried to get her bearings back, pulling her legs under herself to stand up. Her hands bumped against walls on both sides when she extended them, and when something light knocked her over the head, she understood that they were in a broom closet. The stench of vomit filled the narrow space as Five threw up next to her. With the way Allison’s stomach was still churning, the smell made her want to puke too and she had to pinch her nose to prevent it. 

“You all right?” she asked when the sounds of his retching had stopped. 

She felt a tug on her cape as he pulled at it to help himself get back on his feet. “We’re on the floor where the departure room is,” he said. The muffled sound of the siren resounded on the outside.

“Why didn’t you take us there?” she asked, reducing her voice to a whisper, afraid they might be heard. “If you were going to blink us anyway, why not spare yourself another jump and get us directly to our destination?”

“I can’t,” Five said, whispering too. “For the same reason that we couldn’t use the briefcase outside of the departure room. Their security measures won’t let me blink inside the room.”

“Are those measures specifically against _you_? How many rooms did you blow up?”

“Only two,” Five said irritably, as though he couldn’t believe that the Commission had made such a fuss over two rooms. “The room isn’t far, but we’ll have to get there on foot and they’ll probably be waiting for us.”

“Maybe I could—” Allison started, knowing already how hopeless her suggestion was.

“There’ll be a host of them, Allison,” Five replied predictably. “Too many for you to rumor them before they can shoot you in the head. And I can’t—" There was light filtering around the door and Allison’s eyes had adjusted to the semi-darkness enough that she could see her brother rake his fingers through his hair and tug at it. “No, I’m the one you have to rumor.”

Galloping footsteps made Allison clamp her mouth on the words she wanted to say, holding her breath until she was sure that the troop had moved past them. “Have you _lost your mind_?” she asked a fierce whisper, gripping his shoulder. “Why would I do this?”

“I can get you right at the door of the departure room,” Five said, shrugging off her hand. “But I will be useless in a fight, a burden to you against the guards—unless you rumor me to get rid of the side effects that mess with my jumps.”

“No,” Allison blurted out. She stepped back and her head bumped against the edge of a shelf, making bottles of various products knock together. “No way. I’m not doing this. If your jumps are messy, it must be a way for your body to protect you from injuring yourself worse. It’s like pain, it’s here to tell you something!”

“If I stopped every time I hurt somewhere, I would never get anything done,” Five said with a snort.

“I’m _not_ going to help you overcome that so you can mess yourself up worse!”

“What other choice do we have? They’re going to—” Five cut himself off when more footsteps and shouting voices boomed out. “We can’t stay in that closet forever. So you’re going to rumor me so that I can use my powers properly, then I’ll jump us in front of the departure room and distract them, while you go to the room and use the briefcase to leave.”

“And you want me to leave you behind? They’ll kill you!” She grabbed his arm again and dug her finger in it. “Five!”

He turned toward her, his face divided in two by the neat band of light streaking across it, his eyes gleaming. “So what?” he said sharply. “If we don’t do this, they’ll kill both of us, and then who will be left to save our family? With a briefcase, you’ll be able to bring all of them back to 2019. You’ll be able to see Claire again. I thought you’d be willing to do anything for this, but I guess I was mistaken.”

“You asshole,” Allison said in a breath. It felt too hot and stuffy inside the closet, the stench of puke near unbearable now, making the urge to be sick war against her urge to cry. “You can’t ask me to sacrifice my brother in order to see my daughter again! That’s not fair.”

“What does this have to do with fairness? There’s nothing fair about life, certainly nothing about _our_ lives. It really shouldn’t be much of a choice at all. You’ve lived without me for almost two decades; you should be used to it by now. As of now, Claire is dead and you have a way to change it.”

She gave his shoulder a shove. “Shut up!”

“Allison, listen to me,” he said, his voice growing impassionate, though he kept it low-pitched. “I know you have hung-ups about your power. I know what it’s like, all right? I always wanted to time-travel and when I did it, I ruined my own life out of sheer arrogance. And then I stranded you all in the sixties, and apparently I’ve been screwing up with the time-space continuum trying to fix my mistakes. I _hate_ that part of my powers. I wish I couldn’t do it at all, so I wouldn’t be tempted to mess everything up again.”

This was such an echo of Allison’s feelings about her own powers that she couldn’t reply. She wasn’t used to him being so candid with his faults, even when they’d been children—especially not then. Appearing to be on top of things had always been so important to him. He’d hated making mistakes and even more so when someone pointed it out to him, which was why they’d done it as often as they could, just to watch him get snotty out of embarrassment. God, she’d _missed_ him. How could he be asking her to abandon him?

“But if you rumor me, you won’t be taking away my free will,” he went on, a tremor in his voice. “You won’t ever have a more willing target than I am. Because if I can make sure you get away, that you and the others are safe, then all of it will have been worth it. Don’t you get it? If I can make this one thing _right_ , then everything I went through will have meaning. It won’t have been for nothing. Don’t let it have been for nothing.”

Allison’s breathing hitched and she closed her eyes. _Don’t cry. If you start crying, you lose._ The voices were getting closer and Allison could hear a man bark, “Search every room! Even the closets! They have to be hiding _somewhere_.”

“Allison, we have no time,” Five said. “Please!”

“Fine,” she said, hating herself. “How do you want… what should I say?”

“Let me think. Something like, ‘I heard a rumor that you could use your power without discomfort.’”

“We can’t even be sure that it’ll work.”

“We won’t know until you try.”

People were running in the corridors, doors slamming open and shut. Allison stepped away from her brother, closing her fists and pressing her fingernails into her palms. “ _I heard a rumor_ …” The flash of light in Five’s eyes briefly illuminated his face, which glinted with perspiration. “… _that you could use your power without discomfort._ How are you feeling?”

He exhaled, making his neck crack. “Like shit,” he said. “We should go.”

He handed her out the briefcase and then took her hand, his own hand feeling icy. “Five,” she said. “I… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said, his cold fingers curling around hers. “This is what I want. Can you just tell the others that I… tell them that I… Shit, why is this so hard?” He clicked his tongue, making a small irritated sound. “Tell the others to keep their fucking heads down.”

“All right,” she said, her voice choked with tears. 

Their next jump wasn’t anywhere as brutal as the last two she’d done with him, so at least she knew her rumor had worked. When they landed in front of the two doors marked ‘DEPARTURE’ and ‘ARRIVAL’, the corridor was packed with men and women in khaki uniforms and berets. Allison and Five stepped out right in the middle of them, startling the ones closest.

“Allison, go!” Five shouted, wrenching his hand out of hers. 

His blade flipped open with a _shlack!_ and he teleported right in front of the quickest agent, a dark-haired woman who was already aiming at them. He stabbed her and pushed at her rifle, which deviated the shot and sent the bullet flying into another of the goons, freeing Allison’s way to the departure room. 

“Go!” Five shouted again.

Knowing that she shouldn’t waste this chance, Allison bolted at the door. 

—-

Ray had never been kidnapped before, but what he got out of the whole experience was that he shouldn’t second-guess himself when his instinct told him that something was a trap. Because no matter how harmless the intruder had looked, he’d ended up pointing a gun at Ray and had said with an apologetic smile that Ray should follow his instructions. Ray had been given a briefcase, which wouldn’t have been alarming had he not listened to Allison and Five’s tales of time-traveling briefcases. And sure enough, the briefcase had started humming at a high pitch and a bright blue light had engulfed Ray, sucking him into a vortex.

The landing was smoother than he’d feared, but he was so disoriented by the travel that he staggered and tripped on a rug, toppling an empty vase that was on the edge of a coffee table. Swearing under his breath, Ray swept the shards of the broken vase with his hands and then awkwardly put them back on the table, before finally looking around. Whatever he’d expected, that wasn’t it. He stood in a living room so sterile it looked like a photo in a catalogue—or maybe like the room wasn’t completely furnished yet. The floor was white tiling, with a fringed rug under the coffee table, and the walls were painted white with no pictures on them. There was a black leather couch, a dinner table with six padded chairs, and in front of Ray a large patio door overlooked a lawn. 

“Where the hell am I?” Ray muttered to himself. 

He jumped when a door flew open behind him, spinning around with his heart leaping in his chest at the same time. Several people barged into the room, including a white man who was large enough to be worth two of Ray, and another man who held a knife.

“Oh, hey, Ray-ray! What’s up, man?” one of the people said, wriggling fingers at him, and Ray relaxed when he recognized Allison’s brother Klaus. 

This made identifying the other people a lot easier. The massive one must be Luther and the petite woman Vanya, which made the knife-totting Latino boy Diego. And… Ray gasped at the sight of a glowing blue silhouette.

“Are you—” he said, feeling silly even to think it—but hey, stranger things had happened since Five had barged into their lives, and Allison had said that her dead brother was of Korean descent, which matched the transparent blue man’s features. “Are you Ben?”

“How do you know that?” Allison’s dead brother said. “Who are you?”

“Oh, guys, meet Ray, Allison’s husband I was telling you about. Ray, meet the rest of the Hargreeves.”

“Nice to meet you, man,” said the man with the knife, Diego, swiftly switching his knife in his left hand so his right one would be free to give Ray to shake.

The other Hargreeves siblings politely saluted Ray too—Klaus gave him a heartfelt hug, while the others shook his hand, even ghost Ben, which was somehow the weirdest experience in Ray’s life despite the eventfulness of the last few days.

“So, you’re Allison’s husband,” Luther said as he shook Ray’s hand in his huge paw for so long it became awkward. “That’s great. Congratulations. That’s really, really great.”

“Luther, bro, I think you’re freaking him out,” Diego told his brother, patting him on his huge shoulder. 

“Oh, sorry!” Luther said, letting go of Ray’s hand like a hot potato.

“No, no, it’s all right,” Ray said, though in truth he was wondering what it’d been about. He gave the other siblings a sweeping look. None of them looked injured, or any worse for the wear, and Ray wished he had a way of telling Allison that her family was fine. “What has happened to you all? Allison and Five have been looking everywhere for you.”

“Wait, Five is back?” Diego said. 

“Right, I forgot to tell you about that,” Klaus said. “In my defense, we’ve been a bit busy telling Vanya our life story.” He gave his sister a broad smile, which she returned a bit more reservedly. “As for what happened to us, well, we don’t really know. We’ve all been drugged and woke up in that deadly empty house. Seriously, _who_ decorated that place? I would say it looks like a mausoleum, but I’ve had enough first-hand experience with mausoleums to know that a bit more thought goes into—”

“Klaus, shut up,” Diego said. “Sorry about my brother, Ray.”

“It’s all right,” Ray said, amused. “He got me out of prison, so he can talk for as long as he wants.”

“About that,” Ben said, giving Klaus a pointed look.

“Yeah, yeah,” Klaus said, rolling his eyes. “So, Ray, full disclosure: Ben helped in getting you out.”

“I _helped_? I did everything! You just sat on your ass, waiting—”

“Well, you wouldn’t be able to do anything at all if it weren’t for me!”

“How did _you_ get here?” Luther asked, as though he wasn’t aware of the fight happening right next to him. Habit, Ray supposed. 

“A man came to my house,” Ray said. “He looked… well, having met Five, I should have known that looks can be deceiving, but I was stupid enough to think him harmless until he threatened me with a gun and then gave me a briefcase.” Ray pointed at the briefcase, which rested on its side next to the coffee table.

“So it _is_ the Commission who’s behind all this,” Diego said, hitting the open palm of his left hand with his right fist. “But what do they—”

“It is and it isn’t,” said a voice, and from the door out of which the Hargreeves had emerged came the man who had threatened Ray and given him the briefcase. “Sorry for not coming with you,” he said to Ray. “I couldn’t get away for too long.”

The Hargreeves contemplated the newcomer in astonished silence. Ray understood their reaction, as he’d had pretty much the same a little earlier. The man wore glasses, a grey suit with a black tie, none of which were remarkable—but what was noteworthy about him was his size, as he was so small that he stood mid-chest with Ray, and his awkward but friendly smile.

“My name is Herb,” he said to the company. He gave them a small wave. “Hello. It’s an honor to meet all of you, by the way—huge fan of the Umbrella Academy, I used to collect the... Anyway. I do work for the Commission, but it isn’t on their behalf that me and my colleagues have brought you here.”

“What,” Klaus said, “is it like, a friendly kidnapping side hobby that you have, or…?”

“Um, no?” Herb said, looking puzzled. “This is all very serious. We’re La Résistance!”

“I’m sorry,” Vanya said. “I’m kind of new to all this, because I lost my memories and everything, but—”

“What the fuck?” Diego said.

“Yes, what he said,” Vanya said, pointing a thumb at her brother.

“What are you resisting against?” Ray said. “Because I know a thing or two about resisting oppression, but my movement has never organized _kidnappings_.”

“It’s understandable that you would all be a little miffed about the circumstances,” Herb said, flapping a hand in an appeasing gesture. “But it was all done with your best interests at heart. See, you’ve all died, several times.”

“We died?” Luther said.

“This is bullshit,” Diego said, punctuating his declaration by pointing his very-sharp-looking knife at Herb, who had a movement of recoil.

Klaus laughed. “No, I think I would know it if I’d died. Me of all people.”

“I would know it too if you’d all died,” Ben said. “Except if—”

“Except if time had been reversed, yes,” Herb said. “Good, I see that you’re following. Your brother Number Five has reversed the events a number of times, but this has been very… taxing on him and on the fabric of time and space. I’ll explain all of it once your siblings are here.”

“You mean Allison is coming?” Ray said. “She and Five know where we are? They didn’t when I left them.”

“They know now.” Herb grimaced, chuckling nervously. “It wasn’t exactly how we’d planned it, but they should be here in—”

A flash of blue light exploded at the center of the room, forcing everyone to close their eyes for a second. When Ray opened them, he saw that the light had brought on with it Allison, down on her knees, clutching a briefcase against her chest, her whole body wrecked with sobs. 

—-

When she saw a sobbing black woman wearing a black cape appear in the living room, Vanya only had a second of wondering who she was before everyone else, except for Herb, rushed at her. They helped her up, asked her what was wrong, whether she was injured, and before her name was even uttered, Vanya understood that the woman must be her sister Allison, who she’d almost killed.

Allison’s face was streaked with tears and snot, her voice shaking as she alternatively clung to each of her brothers, saying their names instead of answering their questions. “Ben!” she exclaimed when she saw her dead brother. “Oh my god, how are you—”

“Klaus’ power,” Ben said. “Like at the Icarus Theater. It’s so good to talk to you, Allison.”

Crying harder, Allison hugged the ghost’s flimsy silhouette and Vanya watched the scene anxiously, waiting for Allison to see her and wondering what you said to a sister that you didn’t remember, but who had every reason to hate you. _Hi. I’m glad I have a sister and I’m sorry I tried to kill her._ It was on par with ‘sorry I destroyed the world, guys,’ much too weak when put next to the enormity of the things she’d done. 

Finally, Allison let go of Ben and turned her tear-filled eyes toward Vanya. “Vanya,” she said. Vanya’s eyes were drawn to the scar that barred Allison’s throat and she felt sick at the idea that she’d caused it.

“Hey,” Vanya said inanely. “Allison, right? I’m sorry about—”

“I missed you,” Allison said, before throwing her arms around Vanya’s neck like she’d done to Ben.

Her nose in her sister’s hair, Vanya felt her eyes well up with tears. “The guys told me that I—I’m sorry that—” she tried again. 

“No, no,” Allison said, shaking her head against Vanya’s shoulder. “Don’t be. I’m sorry too. I… We’ll talk about this later, all right?”

Allison detached herself from Vanya and wiped her face. “What are you doing here, Ray?” she asked her husband. “Where are we?” As she looked around the room, her eyes finally landed on Herb’s diminutive form. “Who are _you_?”

“Hi, I’m Herb,” Herb said. “I work for the Commission but—”

In two large strides, Allison got to Herb and pulled him by the collar of his shirt, forcing him on his tiptoes. “What’s your game?” she shouted to his face. “Are you the one who kidnapped my siblings? My husband? Where is Five?”

“Allison,” Luther said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Let him go.”

“Not until he tells me—”

“Look at him, he can’t speak like this.” Herb was spluttering, his face turning red as he tried to choke out words. “He was about to explain to us what’s going on. Allison.” Luther’s hand moved from her shoulder to her wrist. “I don’t know what’s happened to you, but I promise that if we don’t like his answers, I’ll put his head through the wall. Okay?” Herb made a whizzy noise at Luther’s words, which both Luther and Allison ignored.

After a few long seconds, Allison exhaled noisily through her nose. “Fine,” she said and opened her hands, releasing Herb.

Herb coughed and tugged at his collar, taking huge gulps of air. “I should have started with—I’m part of la Résistance—uh, the resistance movement against the Handler. We didn’t send those assassins who tried to kill you and Number Five. Where is he, by the way? He was supposed to be with you.”

Herb strained his neck looking left and right, as though he hoped that Five—it felt weird to Vanya, calling a supposed brother of hers by a number—would spring from behind the couch. Allison’s face crumpled like a wet tissue, “He’s not here,” she said. “He distracted security so I could escape with the briefcase. They must have captured him by now. Or…”

“What, you think they killed him?” Luther asked, alarmed. Turning toward Herb, he repeated, “Did they kill him?”

“I—I don’t know,” Herb said, anxiously rubbing his hands together. “Oh, this is bad, this is very bad. This wasn’t the plan at all.”

“What _was_ the plan, exactly?” Diego demanded to know. “Because all I’m seeing is that you’ve kidnapped all of us and now one of my brothers might be dead!”

Allison stifled a sob while Ray rubbed her back. “It’s my fault,” she said tremulously. “Five’s powers were malfunctioning, making him sick, and he asked me to rumor him so he could still use them and fight—and I did it! And then I fucking left him there. I’m the worst sister.”

“Hey, Allison, no,” Klaus said, walking up to her so that she was now surrounded on all sides. “You know how Five is, he can’t take no for an answer. He probably would have… jumped right into the fray even without your help. And he might not be dead, right? He’s a tough cookie. He’s survived a lot. I can try to conjure him, but I’m pretty sure he’s not dead.”

“Let’s get some answers first,” Diego said. “Herb, explain yourself.”

“This is so bad,” Herb moaned, sitting down on the edge of the coffee table. “All we wanted was to get Number Five’s help against the Handler!”

Allison sniffed and rubbed a thumb under her eye, frowning at Herb. “And how does it translate to kidnapping my brothers and sister—and my husband?”

“During all the loops, Number Five was always so focused on protecting his family that it was hard to get his attention,” Herb said. “Not to mention, well, all the risks to the timeline if we just let him do it all over again.”

“Am I the only one who doesn’t understand what you mean by ‘loops’?” Vanya asked. So much was happening, both in terms of emotions and events, that she felt like her head was about to explode. “What sort of loops are we talking about?”

“Time loops,” Allison answered instead of Herb. “Five has been rewinding time again and again to save us. Apparently, we die a lot. That’s what has been screwing with his powers.”

“What do you want with Five?” Ben asked. “Why did you want his attention?”

“To have his help against the Handler! I mean, we members of the resistance are resourceful people but we’re… well, there aren’t a lot of us, and we’re lacking—” Herb raised a hand above his head and mimed stabbing.

“Murder power?” Luther suggested.

“Yes, exactly. So we figured that if we could gather all of you in a safe place, Number Five would finally be able to stop worrying about you and accept to help us. Once we’d have secured all of you, we planned to tell him about it. When the Handler was dead, you would be able to go back to where you belong and everyone would be the happier for it.”

“So you kidnapped us,” Vanya said, feeling a spark of anger sizzle under her confusion and the rest of her emotional turmoil. “ _That_ was your solution? Do we have any say in this or are we just pawns you can use against our brother?” What was so special about Five anyway? As the only one of her siblings she hadn’t met yet, everything she’d heard about him made her curious.

“What—you—no!” Herb stammered, waving his hands. “We weren’t trying to use you against him. We were just trying to help him—so he could help us. None of you were harmed, right? We even left you your knives!” he added, jerking a hand at Diego.

“Thank you so much,” Diego said with deadpan sarcasm, very pointedly twirling one of his knives. 

“What about me?” Ray asked. “Why take me too?”

“Well, we weren’t sure what to do about you, but once Number Five started interacting with you, we thought he might get attached or something. I mean, who knows how his mind works, right?” 

His nervous laughter was tentative and his eyes darted looks at them, as though checking whether they were laughing with him. None of them laughed. Herb’s chuckling died down and he swallowed audibly. 

“So what’s happening to Five now?” Luther asked. “You don’t think… I mean, he can’t be dead, right?”

“I don’t think so,” Klaus said. Beads of sweat pearled on his forehead and Ben flickered for a second like the image on a faulty monitor. “I’ve been trying to conjure him and I’ve gotten a big fat nothing so far. Granted, Five would probably make a very stubborn ghost.”

“The only hope we have of him not being dead is that the Handler is feeling vindicative enough that she doesn’t want to kill him too soon,” Herb said gloomily. “No, we’ll have to find something else to oppose her. Such a shame, we invested so much in this plan. Unless you would be willing to…” He looked up hopefully at them and made another stabbing motion with his hand.

“No,” Allison said sharply, crossing her arms. Her puffy eyes glared daggers at Herb. “We’re not doing anything for you. _You_ ’re going to help us. You’ll help us get our brother back. The only question is whether you’ll do it of your own free will, or if I have to rumor you into it.”


	9. Chapter 9

“Allison, why don’t you sit down?”

Outside, the sun was coming down and slanting orange beams over the top of the hedge, so wherever they were, it had to be the end of the day. Allison glanced at her husband where he sat on the couch with Klaus and Vanya but kept pacing across the room. Diego was pacing similarly and they crossed paths sometimes, giving each other twin looks of shared frustration. Ben wasn’t there anymore, or at least he wasn’t visible, and Luther stood in a corner, probably mindful of taking up too much space or maybe feeling awkward about Ray’s presence—Allison had never thought about what it would be like for the two of them to meet and she didn’t want to examine how she felt about it right now. Things were complicated enough already.

“We shouldn’t have let him go!” Diego blurted out with no warning. “One of us should have gone with him, kept an eye on him to make sure he does what he said he would do.”

“We’ve been through this a thousand times,” Allison said, gritting her teeth, even though deep down she agreed with him. “If one of us had gone with him, we’d have been found out. The Commission must already be on high alert because of Five and me breaking in.”

“And couldn’t you have rumored him or something?”

She ground to a halt, hissing in exasperation. “Were you sleeping for our whole childhood or did the information slipped through the hole in your brain? You know that my rumor won’t hold if I’m too far away from the target. We had no other choice but to trust him.”

It had rankled to have to let Herb go, but like it or not they were indeed safer here than on the outside, where the Commission would keep hunting them down until they were all dead. They wouldn’t be able to help Five if they were dead. Her stomach twisting at the thought of her brother, Allison reprised her pacing, her fists clenching at her sides. Snipping at Diego was a familiar, almost unthinking habit, but the truth was that, just like him, she would have felt better if she could punch something. She replayed her last moments with Five in a loop, wondering what she should have done differently to allow him to escape with her. In the end, following the briefcase had only gotten her stuck in this house. Of course, if Herb decided to abandon them here, they could still get away with the briefcase, but Allison felt uneasy about using complex technology with no understanding of how it worked. Without any pre-programmed coordinates, who knew where it could take them? She didn’t want to risk scattering her family again.

“If Herb is incommunicado for too long, we could have Vanya blow up the house,” Klaus suggested, throwing his right leg over his left knee and slouching down further in the couch, making the leather creak under his butt. 

“I don’t even know how I’d do that,” Vanya said. “I know you said I had a power, but… I don’t know, it doesn’t feel real.”

She glanced at Allison, her eyes shifting nervously. Allison had caught her looking several times at the scar on her neck and it wasn’t hard to guess what she was thinking about. It pinched at Allison’s heart, but she didn’t have the energy at the moment for a talk with Vanya about what had happened between them, especially if Vanya still didn’t remember anything. She could only be consumed with worry about one sibling at a time.

“It felt plenty real when the house was coming down on our heads, believe me,” Diego said. 

“Diego, come on,” Luther said. “Leave her alone.”

“I’m just saying!” Diego said, throwing his hands up in the air. “Maybe this time it could work in our favor.”

“I could always try,” Vanya said hesitantly. 

“Uh, maybe not right now, though,” Klaus said, inching away from her. 

“I don’t know about Vanya,” Allison said, “but if that asshole isn’t back soon, I vote in favor of trashing this place and then taking off with the briefcase.”

All the eyes in the room converged to the briefcase where it had been tucked away next to the couch, looking innocuous, perfectly indistinguishable from a normal briefcase.

“I’m still stuck on the concept of the time-traveling briefcase,” Ray said. “Your brother being able to time-travel seems less extraordinary to me than a briefcase.”

He’d been pretty quiet so far, and Allison felt a pang of guilt at how she’d neglected to check on him and how he was handling the situation, so absorbed she’d been in her anxiety about Five. He’d been kidnapped by the discontent employees of a time-traveling organization who wanted to use his brother-in-law as an executioner; this undoubtedly wasn’t what he expected when he’d proposed to her. 

“Oh, you know, when you’ve been raised by a robot and a talking chimpanzee, so few things can surprise you,” Klaus said, rolling his head against the back of the couch. 

“What?” Ray turned distressed eyes at Allison, then back at Klaus. “I mean, Allison told me your dad wasn’t the greatest, but… is he supposed to be the robot or the chimpanzee in that metaphor?”

“Neither,” Klaus said. “Dad was completely, wonderfully human. A shame that you couldn’t meet him.”

“Klaus was talking literally, babe,” Allison said, with an apologetic grimace. “I kind of gave you the short version on our childhood. There were some details that didn’t make the cut.”

“No, no, that’s fine,” Ray said. “There’s only so much shocking information one’s brain can take at a time. I know my limits. I’m happy to sit here and contemplate the time-traveling briefcase.”

A bright blue flash and a high-pitched whooshing got everyone’s immediate attention. Allison and Diego instinctively drew back together from opposite sides of the room with Luther joining them in a few strides, the three of them standing defensively in front of the couch. It was only Herb and Dot, both of them dressed differently from the last time Allison had seen them—Herb’s suit a darker gray than before and Dot wearing a pencil skirt, a blouse and a jacket, with a pair of thick-rimmed glasses perched on her nose. She wriggled her fingers at them in greeting. 

“We come in peace,” Herb said in a nervous joking tone, his eyes fixed on the knife in Diego’s hand. 

“What the hell took you so long?” Diego said, though he put the knife away somewhere under his clothes—he wasn’t wearing any of his usual straps, making Allison wonder where exactly he kept his blades. 

Herb blinked. “I thought I’d made sure to be gone only for an hour—at least from your perspective, it’s actually been a couple of days on my end. I thought you would enjoy the time to catch up with each other. Have a little family reunion.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Klaus, who hadn’t moved from the couch. “It’s so much fun, waiting to know whether your brother is dead, alive or being tortured. Wished you’d given us a few hours to, you know, bask a little more in the feeling.”

“What did you find about Five?” Allison asked, cutting to the chase before any of her brothers could go off on a tangent. “Is he alive?”

“That’s the good news,” Dot said brightly. “We have it from a reliable source that Number Five has been captured alive.”

“What’s the bad news?” Luther asked, voicing Allison’s thought before she could.

“Well,” Herb said and hissed between his teeth, his mouth curving down. “He’s apparently pretty banged up.”

“What do you mean, ‘banged up’? Was he injured during his capture?”

“Or is it his power?” Allison asked, her heart in her throat. “He was already doing pretty badly before.”

“We don’t know for sure,” Herb said. “We just know that he’s been transferred to a secure facility owned by the Commission and that he’s been given medical treatment.”

“Wait, I thought that the Commission wanted all of us dead,” Vanya said. Allison and Luther spread apart to free Herb and Dot’s view of her. “Why would they give him medical attention?”

“That’s the other bad news,” Herb said. “The Handler has been pretty, um, pretty vocal in her hatred of Number Five recently, so if she’s keeping him alive it can’t be for anything good.”

“We think it’s either because she thinks she can still use him in some way or because she wants to know where the rest of you are,” Dot said.

“How many people know where we are, by the way?” Allison asked. 

“Just us from the resistance,” Herb said. “So, uh, nine people.”

Diego snorted and Luther said, “Nine people? _That_ ’s the resistance?”

“We’ve managed to find all of you and get you to safety, though, so I would say we’re not doing too badly for ourselves,” Herb said, looking so smug about it that Allison wanted to strangle him.

“Kidnapped,” Diego corrected. “I think the word you wanted is ‘kidnapped.’”

Herb’s look of smugness crumpled. “It’s such a loaded word… all right, all right!” he said, stepping back in front of Diego’s threateningly raised eyebrow. “We kidnapped you. Our bad, really.”

“Nine people is not a lot for a resistance movement,” Ray said, “but it’s a lot of people who’re in on a secret location. How can we be sure that none of them will talk?”

“We’ve been able to fly under the radar for now,” Dot said. “The Handler has been very focused on Number Five, to the point of obsession. They have a bit of a history with each other.”

Allison almost asked what sort of history she meant, but then thought she was better off not knowing. “Did you find out where the Handler is keeping Five? Because honestly, that’s the only thing I care about right now.”

Dot’s teeth gleamed in the dying daylight as she smiled. “Of course we did,” she said. “That’s what we came here to tell you.”

—-

Consciousness was like the tide, its waves washing over Five’s mind and then ebbing again. His memories were in shambles and all he could grasp of them were tattered fragments. Fighting Headquarter’s security service, the pounding of his blood in his temples, the metallic tang of it in his mouth, the stickiness of it on his hands as he stabbed again and again, the cries of the wounded and dying echoing in his wake. The pain in his head, blinding, absolute, striking him like lightning. Voices around him, garbled as though his head were underwater, hands pawing at him, flashing lights. A room with white-washed walls, lying in a bed with metallic side rails, his wrists bound to them with leather straps. Blipping machines, a clip pinching his left pointer, an uncomfortable sensation in his other arm. The Handler’s face floating above him, haloed by perfectly sculpted bleached-blond curls, her vividly red lips stretched into a delighted smile. 

“You did a number on yourself, Five. It’s a good thing I still have a few questions for you.” Five struggled to speak, parched lips cracking and bleeding from the effort. She tutted at him. “Don’t try to speak. You should rest a little more.” She cupped his cheek with her hand, sharp fingernails scraping his skin; he badly wanted to bite her fingers to the bone. “We’ll talk later.”

Next time Five was aware, he wasn’t in the white room anymore, but in a wider one with bare cement walls and floor. More noteworthy was the fact that he wasn’t in bed but sitting in a chair, strapped at the wrists and ankles. His feet were bare and cold, and he wore loose pants and a hospital-like tunic. The cold rose goosebumps on his naked arms. A needle had been inserted in the back of his right hand and taped to it; the needle was attached to a tube, which itself hung from a bag on an IV pole. Something was wrapped around his head and he unthinkingly tried to raise his left hand to feel for whatever it was. He tugged ineffectively at it, frustration needling him through the heavy fog that had swallowed his mind. He was truly trapped, bound, reduced to powerlessness. 

“Your head is bandaged,” the Handler said. 

It was only her speaking that made him realize she was in the room with him, wearing a checkered bell-shaped dress and a pearl necklace. Her red high heels clacked on the cement floor as she approached, the sound bouncing against the walls. She had long gloves that climbed almost up to her elbows, but the rest of her arms were bare. Wasn’t she cold too? Five was freezing, the sensation overriding the dull ache at the back of his head, which felt muffled like under a thick blanket, waiting to spike again. Five couldn’t remember much about what had led him here, but he could remember the pain being much worse than it was now. 

“Wha—at—” With increasing alarm, Five found that the act of forming words was much harder than it should be. His lips and tongue were uncooperative, and it was with excruciating focus that he managed to drag out the rest of his sentence, “Whaaaat did you—do to me?” His voice didn’t sound like his own.

The Handler watched him struggle through the question with a small smile before she answered sweetly, “We had to do a little bit of surgery on you. To save your life, I should specify.”

“Ss-save my—”

“To put it simply, you gave yourself a hemorrhagic stroke by abusing your powers. We had to open your skull to repair the ruptured blood vessel and stop the bleeding in your brain. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Five tried to scowl at her, but he wasn’t sure his facial muscles were responding properly to his command. Some of the fog had lifted off his brain and he was becoming acutely aware of how humiliatingly vulnerable he was, tied to a chair, sick and drugged, dressed flimsily, in front of her who was as impeccably put together as always. Though his vision was still fuzzy, he didn’t need to clearly see her smile to know that she was very much enjoying this.

He looked at the liquid dripping down the IV tube. “What—did you—”

“We gave you medication to lower your blood pressure and codeine for the pain. Among other things.”

Irritation flashed through Five’s sluggish mind at the way she’d spoken over him. Was it how it’d felt for Diego, when they were kids and Five had gotten impatient with his brother’s stuttering, finishing his sentences for him? Five would have thought of apologizing to him for that if he’d entertained any illusion of ever seeing Diego again. 

“I would advise against trying to use your powers,” the Handler continued. “If I understood the doctors correctly, in the unlikely chance that they wouldn’t simply fizzle out, you would probably kill yourself trying. It’s a miracle that you haven’t done so already. See, this is what I’ve always admired about you. Your… I guess calling it determination isn’t doing it justice. Your doggedness, I would say. It’s a shame that you would focus all of that grit and boundless devotion to a cause so small as the fate of your dysfunctional family.”

Five’s heart leaped in his throat at the mention of his family. Had Allison gotten away? She must have, or the Handler would have been all too delighted to tell Five right away if she’d been captured. What about the others? Somehow, despite everything pointing to it, Five still wasn’t sure that the Handler had his other siblings. Something didn’t feel right about the whole situation. But asking point blank about it would only result in the Handler laughing to his face or giving him a cryptic answer to better torture him with the uncertainty. 

Instead, he asked, “Why s-save me a—at all?” It was becoming easier to talk, or maybe he was just getting used to the effort. 

“As I said before—though maybe you don’t remember it—I have some questions for you.” As she talked, the Handler had kept walking closer, her steps like a countdown, and she was now close enough that he could smell her lavender perfume as she towered over him. Ever since he’d started working for the Commission, the scent of lavender, something he’d completely forgotten while in the apocalypse, always made him feel sick. The Handler leaned over to him and he could see that on her forehead, concealed under a thick layer of makeup, was a small circular scar, like a bullet wound. “Mainly one question, actually: where is the rest of your family? One of your sisters was with you at HQ, the one who’s been following you around for the last loop, but the others seem to have dropped off the face of the earth. And killing you won’t be enough for me, Five. I want to kill each and every one of your precious siblings, and save you for last. Because you’re not afraid of dying, I know you well enough to know that. You’re afraid of _them_ dying. Because if they do, your whole miserable existence would become meaningless.”

The rest of her tirade was mostly lost on Five, whose muddled mind had latched onto a few precious pieces of information: Allison had gotten away; the Handler _didn’t know where the others were_. She didn’t have his family. This raised other questions, like who had kidnapped them if the Handler hadn’t, but at least if Allison was free there was a chance she would find them. It would probably be their only chance; Five had tried again and again and _again_ to save them, and he’d miserably failed every time. Maybe the answer was that he had to give them the opportunity to save themselves. A bubble of giddiness swelled in Five’s chest and he almost started laughing, only containing it through willpower. 

“Fff-fuck you,” he managed to utter, and no two words had ever felt that good before.

The Handler straightened, her bright mouth pursing. “I knew you would be like that, though I can’t help being disappointed. Is it admirable or pathetic, how you fight for people who will never love you back the way you love them?”

Her mocking didn’t matter; it couldn’t touch Five. Of course she didn’t understand why he did what he did. She didn’t love anyone, not even the little girl she’d raised as her own. _I don’t care whether they love me or not,_ he would have said if it were easier to talk. _I’ve wasted my own chance at happiness, but they haven’t._

“I know that under normal circumstances you would never talk.” She walked away from him and his eyes followed her to a table that he hadn’t noticed, too focused on her. His neck hurt and he couldn’t raise his head enough to see what was on it, but he could guess easily. “But in the state you’re in right now? Now that there is less of a risk that you would die too soon, I’m curious to see how long you’ll last before I break you.”

Five took a long, slow breath, steeling himself for the pain to come. It helped that he knew that whether she managed to break him or not wouldn’t change anything. He had no secret to spill, didn’t know anything that could endanger his siblings. She could do her worse; there was nothing left for Five to be afraid of. 

—-

Lying down on his stomach on the wet forest ground next to Diego and Klaus, examining their target through a veil of trees, Luther was ashamed to say that he was starting to feel the first pangs of hunger. They didn’t have the time to go back and get something to eat, as the first inhabited area worth more than a handful of houses was miles away—or rather, _kilometers_ away, as the locals would say. The coordinates that Herb and Dot gave them had taken the family to 2002, northwest of France, in a rural area north of a city with the almost unpronounceable name of _Rouen_. They’d been here for a day, using their rusty French—what a struggle those _r_ were!—to rent a van and a _gite_ , using both euros that Herb and Dot had procured them and a healthy dose of Allison’s powers to avoid questions. They didn’t know in what state they would find Five, so even in the most optimistic scenario, they would probably need somewhere to crash for at least a few hours. 

“I count twenty armed guards,” Diego said, staring with laser focus at the squat block of concrete surrounded by high fences that Five was supposedly held in. “Rounds every fifteen minutes. They look focused, but not on high alert. They’re professionals but not particularly expecting an attack.”

“They have to know that we’ll be coming for Five, though,” Luther said. “I mean, we thought for a moment that the Commission had kidnapped us, and Five and Allison thought so too, but _they_ know they didn’t kidnap us.”

“Whether they expect us or not, we’ll have to go as soon as Ben comes back,” Diego said.

Luther’s stomach started gurgling, embarrassingly loud. He tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, but his brothers weren’t so easily fooled. Growing up, Dad had put him on a lot of diets—like Five, Luther had a fast metabolism and needed a lot to eat to fuel his powers, so he’d gone hungry pretty often. His siblings had alternated between teasing him about it and sneaking food from the kitchen and their own meals to him. 

“Wait a sec,” Klaus said, wriggling on the ground to snake a hand inside the pocket of his tight pants, “I think I might have half a Sneaker left.”

“No, that’s fine—” Klaus had already extracted from his pocket a crumpled wrapper and Luther sighed. “Okay, thank you,” he said, taking the candy. 

“You gonna be okay to fight?” Diego asked.

“Sure,” Luther said, popping the Sneaker inside his mouth. There was barely more than a bite of it left and it tasted like the plastic wrapper. “I can fight.”

Klaus opened his mouth as though to say something, but then his eyes fixed on a spot in the air. “So, how does it look?” he said, obviously neither to Luther or Diego.

“Make him visible,” Diego demanded.

“Maybe Klaus should save his strength,” Luther said before Klaus could reply. “Once we’re in there, it could be useful if Ben could actually use his power and help us. I mean,” he amended, remembering he wasn’t Number One anymore—just Luther, one among seven siblings. “If that’s all right with you, Klaus. And you, Ben.”

He chose a spot that more or less matched where he thought Klaus had been looking, hoping that he wasn’t too far off, and directed his eyes at it. The thought that Ben was standing right there made his heart squeeze painfully. 

“Yeah,” Klaus said, looking at Luther with an uncharacteristically serious expression. “We’re all right with it.”

“Fine,” Diego said brusquely. “So, what is Ben saying?”

“Ben says that he’s found Five. But he isn’t looking great.”

“What do you mean, ‘not great’?” Diego asked, his hands balling into fists and his eyebrows meeting in a dark line. “Where on the scale of ‘a bit banged up’ to ‘actively dying’ are we talking about?”

“He’s got a bandage—” Klaus spun a finger around the top of his head. “—around his head, and there’s this blond woman who seems to be torturing him.”

“All right,” Diego said, springing up from the ground and brushing sticky dead leaves off his clothes—he’d changed from his white outfit to black jeans and a black turtleneck sweater that made him look like he was about to commit a robbery. “Let’s go find the girls.”

The three of them—or four of them, since Ben must still be here too—went down the slope of the bank they’d been lying on, then followed the path winding between the trees through the forest. They joined their sisters and Ray, who were waiting with their van on the side of a dirt path that ran between the woods and a canola field. It was pretty early in the morning and the sky was a pallid shade of blue, golden on the horizon line. The canola flowers’ smell was pungent, making Luther’s eyes tear up. 

Vanya and Allison were both leaning against the van’s side, while Ray was sitting inside at the driver’s seat, as he was to be their getaway driver once they got Five out. Luther gave the man a nod, which Ray returned; Luther had been extremely careful to be nothing but polite to his brother-in-law, and he had to admit that Allison had made a good choice. If anything, Ray had proved to be remarkably resilient to the batshit insanity that surrounded their family. He’d been a little wide-eyed at their arrival in 2002, a far-away future from his point of view, but so far they hadn’t encountered anything that would be too shockingly futuristic for him and most of the strangeness could be chalked up to the fact that they were in a foreign country.

“So?” Allison said as soon as she saw them. “What did you see? Did Ben find Five?”

Since she’d flashed into the living room in tears, there had been a frantic energy to her that concerned Luther. They all worried about Five, but Allison looked about to snap at a moment’s notice. Luther’s first instinct was always to comfort her, but he was hesitant about doing it with her husband around, uncertain of where he stood with her now.

“Ben found Five, yes,” Diego said and reported to Allison and Vanya what Klaus had told them. 

When he got to the part about a blond woman torturing Five, Allison pushed away from the van and said, “It must be the Handler. We have to go now. She’ll kill him if we waste more time. Come on!”

“Allison, hey,” Luther called, catching her by the shoulder as she strode toward the woods. “Slow down, please.”

Behind them, the van door clicked open as Ray got off from the driver’s side, saying, “Allison? Are you going now?”

“We can’t wait any longer,” Allison said, her voice tight with urgency, turning pleading eyes at Luther, then Ray, then the rest of their siblings. “You don’t understand. He’s ready to _die_ for us. He thinks that his life will only have meaning if he can save us.”

“What?” Diego said. 

“That’s what he told me before we got separated.” Allison’s eyes had become shiny with unshed tears and she wiped them furiously. “He spent decades in a wasteland and never gave up on us. We can’t give up on him either.”

“We’re not,” Luther said. “We’re saving him.”

“Of course we’re not abandoning him,” Diego said. “He’s annoying, but he’s our brother.”

“And annoying is kind of a family trait, so,” Luther said. 

“Hey, speak for yourself,” Klaus said with mock indignation. “I’m a delight.”

Allison chuckled and sniffed, saying, “ _I_ ’m a delight, you’re a disaster. Okay, Luther. I get your point. I need to calm down before we launch an attack against the Commission. Running into the action head-on is more Diego’s style.”

“Hey!” Diego protested. 

Allison moved away from Luther, who tried not to feel down about it, and walked to her husband. “Get ready to leave as soon as we’re back with Five, baby. We’re counting on you.”

“I’d ask you to promise me to be careful,” Ray said with a rueful smile, “but I don’t think ‘careful’ is even in the Hargreeves’ lexis.”

“We’ll still do our best.” She leaned in to kiss him and Luther looked away. “Come on, everyone. Let’s go save our brother.”

—-

Klaus had never liked missions. He didn’t like the danger, he didn’t like the violence, he didn’t like the long tedious speeches that Dad always made both before the mission and _after_ , when they were all punch-drunk with exhaustion and all they wanted was to go to bed. Most of all, he didn’t enjoy feeling like a third wheel. His power was mildly useful when it came to recon, but as soon as they got to the fighting, he only had his fists and his feet to help, and he’d never been very good at hand-to-hand either. So as he was traipsing through the Norman forest with his siblings, the knot in his stomach was an unfortunate callback to a past that he’d done everything chemically possible to forget. Sure, a lot was different this time. By giving Ben super-ghost powers, Klaus would be marginally more useful than before. Another major difference was that Vanya was with them, looking pale and a little sick. They’d tried to help her practice her powers on the patio of the _gite_ , offering her whatever observations they’d been able to make on her abilities when they were fighting for their lives that time in 2019. All in all, it hadn’t gone too badly—surely they would be able to blame what little damage she’d made to the roof on a gust of too strong wind—but she must be scared shitless. Amnesia or not, Vanya had never gone on a mission before. Maybe Klaus should say something, try to make her feel better.

He sidled up to her, lightly jumping over a gnarled root that poked out of the ground. “So, Vanny,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“Honestly?” she said with a quick glance at him and a wan smile. “I want to be back at Sissy’s farm in Dallas. Things were simple there. Well, maybe not entirely simple, but at least I didn’t know I had the power to kill everyone on Earth. Seriously,” she went on in a lower voice, “what am I even doing here? I can’t fight, and either I use my power and risk hurting all of you, or I don’t use it and I’m a burden.”

“Ah,” Klaus said, wishing he hadn’t asked her. He wasn’t equipped to deal with this. “I see.”

He sent a SOS look in Ben’s direction. Ben, who had been acting a lot more tolerable since Klaus had let him talk to the others, didn’t even bitch or sigh or roll his eyes. “Tell her that you know what it’s like to be afraid of what you can do,” he said. “But that you also know she can handle it.”

Klaus swallowed. _Well,_ thanks, _Benito, because that’s not heavy as fuck._ “You could go back to the van with Ray,” he said, rather than baring his soul like Ben wanted him to. They were lagging behind now, as Allison was marching ahead, with Luther one step behind her and Diego trying to keep up with the other two; their one-two-three convo, leading the way as they had in the good old days. “God knows I want to do it too.”

“Why don’t you?” Vanya asked, eyes flicking sideways at him. 

“Ah, well, there’s this pesky thing called a ‘conscience.’ Sometimes manifesting in the shape of a cricket, sometimes in the shape of an annoyingly persistent ghost that just so happens to be your dead brother.” This time Ben did roll his eyes. “And Allison is right—Five has risked everything for us, so the least we can do is return the favor. You know, he and you used to be pretty tight as kids.”

“Really? I don’t remember.”

“When he went missing, you would leave the lights on at night for him, so he could find his way or something, I guess. As if Five of all people would get lost.”

“I did? Huh. I must have missed him a lot.”

“Yeah,” Klaus said, thinking back to the first confusing months after Five had left, when they’d hoped that it was just a tantrum and that Five would get lonely and come back to them. “We all did.”

“What the hell are you two doing?” Diego shouted-whispered to them. They were almost at their destination and Klaus could make out the top of the fences, streaked with the tree trunks of the surrounding forest. “Keep up!”

“Duty calls,” Klaus sighed, hurrying his steps, followed closely by Vanya and Ben. 

The plan was simple: in-between two rounds of security, cut a hole in the fence with the pair of shears that Diego had filched from somewhere, get into the building through the service door they’d previously spotted, and follow Ben’s lead up to Five, hopefully without triggering an alarm or running into any guards. But that was the thing about missions—whatever you planned was almost guaranteed to go to shit, so Klaus was trying to prepare himself for it. Diego worked the shears with sharp little _shlick-shlick-shlick_ sounds while Luther and Allison both surveilled the area. It was all so familiar. Klaus rolled on the balls of his feet, feeling the sick twist of anticipation curl at the pit of his stomach. On his right side, he could sense Vanya twitch nervously, making the layered ground crack under her feet as she shifted her weight from one to the other. On his left side, Ben made no sound at all, his presence a void except for the visual of him standing with his arms crossed that Klaus got at the corner of his eye. 

“Okay, come on,” Diego said once his hole was done. “Quick, they’ll be here in a few minutes.”

He’d only cut half of the meshed wire, folding the rest like a door. They had to crawl on their stomachs to get through, which Klaus had always hated, but they were trying to make their entrance not too obvious. As quickly and stealthily as they could, they made their way to the back of the building and the blue aluminum door that they were aiming for. Klaus disliked ‘stealthy’ as a matter of personal life philosophy, yet it was easy to activate old reflexes of walking almost soundlessly. Vanya was the noisiest of them despite her size, and obviously painfully aware of it, grimacing every time something cracked under the soles of her shoes. They all flattened against the concrete wall while Luther took care of the door, his forehead wrinkled with focus. It would be easy for him to just wrench the door off its hinges, but they were trying to be a little sneakier than that, so it demanded a more subtle application of Luther’s strength.

Finally, they heard a distinct _clack_ and Luther pulled the door open. They held their breaths, waiting to see whether an alarm would be triggered. Knowing so little about the Commission and about their interest in Five, they couldn’t be sure of how much security to expect. Ben hadn’t seen all that many guards inside, so it really looked like the Commission weren’t expected to be found in their corner of the French countryside at the beginning of the 21st century. When after a few heartbeats they could hear nothing more alarming than birdsongs, they all relaxed a little.

“After you, _mon frère bien-aimé_ ,” Klaus told Ben. “Lead the way.”

Ben smiled and silently slithered inside the building. A second too late, Luther stepped aside from the door as though to free the way for Ben to get in, then disappeared inside too. In a line, they followed him into the dragon’s maw. The Umbrella Academy was on the warpath. 

—-

Ben was so caught up in the familiarity of being on a mission with his siblings that he found himself walking with the quick careful steps that they’d always used when infiltrating an enemy stronghold, even though he didn’t make any noise when he walked. As it had been before, the building was cold and mostly empty. The walls and floor were cement, painted with a sick shade of greenish beige, the grill-fitted lightbulbs on the ceiling shedding a white, unforgiving light on Ben’s siblings. 

“Let me go ahead,” Ben told Klaus. “I’ll check for any incoming or cameras, and then I’ll come and get you if the way is safe.”

Klaus relayed the information to the others, first in hand gestures, their old code that they hadn’t used in years, and then in whispers when Vanya manifested her incomprehension of the code. Ben left them to it and went to scout ahead. On the other side of the building was a staircase hidden behind heavy double metal doors; the staircase would lead them to the second floor—or rather the first floor, from a European point of view—where Five was being interrogated the last time Ben had checked. Their progression was slow, as Ben made them wait while he checked each new corridor and sometimes told them to backtrack when he spotted a camera in a corner on the ceiling. It was strange, being acknowledged by the others, feeling like he was part of the team again—part of the family. He’d been on the outside looking in for so long, often frustrated by how little he could do to help the people he loved—even Klaus, the only one who could see and hear him—that he couldn’t help but selfishly bask in the feeling of finally being able to do it, even if it came at the cost of Five suffering. 

They eventually reached the staircase door and climbed up the upper floor, but Ben stopped them before they could open the door on the corridor. “I’ll go check on Five,” he said to Klaus. “Can you make me able to touch?”

They’d experimented a bit with range, back when Klaus had started using his power and Ben as parlor tricks for a crowd of rich assholes, so Ben knew that Klaus was capable of it and was more asking out of politeness, in the spirit of the détente they’d tacitly agreed on recently. 

“Sure,” Klaus said. “What’re you gonna do?”

“Last time I went in, that woman was alone with Five, no guards around. If I can knock her out, I might be able to get Five free on my own. In case I can’t, I’ll call for you. Wait for my signal. You know the one.”

“Yeah,” Klaus said, snickering. “I remember.”

The Umbrella Academy had a whole catalogue of signals depending on the situations, but Ben had always been partial to bird cries, which Klaus and Diego used to make abundantly fun of him for. Of course, since Klaus would be the only one to hear him, Ben could just yell, ‘get your asses here’ to the same effect, but whatever, he was allowed to have fun sometimes. 

“Stay put,” Ben said, to Klaus again but he looked at his other siblings as he said it. Luther was fixing an empty spot with a frown of intense focus, maybe trying to pinpoint where Ben was—in that case, he was wildly off—Allison was biting her nails, Vanya had her hands buried in her sleeves and looked about to faint from nerves, and Diego brought up the rear, standing on a lower stair with his face half-swathed in shadow. “I’ll be back soon.”

 _Love you_ , he didn’t say, because it would feel silly and inappropriate in this context, and lose some of its impact from the need to use Klaus as a go-between. Nodding at Klaus, he went through the door and into the corridor, silent as a breath of wind. Klaus making him able to touch things meant that he could choose whether to do it or not, which in that kind of mission was ideal. Ben walked down the corridor up to a nondescript gray door and plunged through it. 

Emerging on the other side, he caught the tail end of the blond woman—who called herself the Handler, according to Allison—talking, “—don’t get your stubbornness, really. Don’t you understand what’s been happening? Time has a way of reasserting itself. The more you try to save your siblings by rewinding time, the more the universe will push back. Why do you think you haven’t been able to save them yet? All you’re doing is hurting yourself. Just give in; you’ll feel much better for it.”

The Handler was wiping her hands on a white towel, staining it red. She stood next to a table that held various tools Ben preferred not to look too closely at, a pair of long cream-colored gloves thrown across it. He went to Five, who was strapped to a chair in the middle of the room. His head was dropped against his chest and his white clothes were spotted with blood. His arms were peppered with bruises and seeping cuts, and a pinkish trickle of saliva was dangling from his mouth. Anxiously, Ben peered at Five’s face, trying to see whether he was still conscious. Though Five’s eyelids were drooping, his eyes were fixed with intent on the Handler’s back, so at least he was still hanging in. Taking advantage of the fact that the Handler wasn’t looking in Five’s direction, Ben started to pop the tongue out of the punch holes of Five’s bindings. He did the ankles first, and when he got to the wrists, Five jerked a little and his eyes swiveled to the strap on his wrist, now unhooked. He blinked and Ben saw the realization slowly dawn on his face. 

His lips started moving, strenuously forming a soft, “B-b-be-en?”

Had Ben still had tear ducts, he would have probably started getting weepy right then. “Yeah, I’m here,” he said, though of course Five couldn’t hear him. “I’m here and so are the others. We’re getting you out of this shithole.”

Five’s breathing was getting quicker and noisier, his chest heaving with erratic puffs, so Ben, desperate to connect with him and calm him down, carefully rested a hand on top of his right one. He couldn’t feel what he touched, but obviously Five could feel something because his eyes widened. Struck by inspiration, Ben started to tap in Morse code on the back of Five’s hand with his finger. _Ben talking. Get you out of here._ Five’s shoulders relaxed and his breathing evened out. His head moved up and down in a nod, and his own fingers tapped against the arm of his chair. _R-E-A-D-Y._ Five evidently wasn’t in fighting form, but a new determination schooled his features and Ben felt a wave of fondness overcome him. This was just like Five—never say die. A few of his fingers ended in a bloody mess from torn fingernails and Ben averted his eyes as he unhooked the strap on Five’s other hand. He stood up, regretfully leaving his brother behind to go to the Handler. 

The Handler was still speaking as though she were having an actual conversation with Five and expected him to reply. “If it were only up to me, I would give you your old job back, you know. But you’ve caused too much damage, so I’m sure you’ll understand why it would look bad for me to just ignore that. All is left for you is to do the right thing. Once you and your family are dead, the timeline will finally set—”

Ben punched her in the mouth and she stumbled back, hitting her hip against the table and making the tools clank together. The bloody towel dropped to the floor. Ben didn’t give her time to recover and hit her temple with the edge of his hand, knocking her out. Hearing a thump behind him, he turned around to see that Five had pulled out of his bindings and keeled over, unable to stand. Ben rushed to his side, but the first touch of his hand made Five flinch and jerk away.

“Sorry,” Ben said to the void.

“’s okay,” Five slurred as though he’d heard him. “Juss—surprised.”

It sounded like it was hard for him to speak, which was worrying. Ben still didn’t know what the bandage on his head was for. A head wound? Did he have a concussion? Tentatively, Ben brushed against his brother’s shoulder again. This time, Five didn’t startle, but it looked like he was steeling himself not to. Ben helped him get up and walk to the door; Five’s legs weren’t holding him up and Ben almost had to drag him. Once at the door, he tried the handle to no avail. The door was locked.

“Shit!” Ben said, because it always felt better to vent his frustration out loud. “Why didn’t I think of the door?”

“L-lee-ave—me,” Five said, leaning heavily against Ben’s side.

“Shut up,” Ben snapped. Then, as loud as he could make it, “Klaus! Get everyone here!”

Behind them, he heard a moan, the Handler stirring back to consciousness. He looked over his shoulder, checking whether she was reaching for a weapon or a call button of some sort. She was groaning, holding her head in her hands as she struggled to sit up. Ben hesitated, wondering if he should leave Five to attack her again, maybe kill her, but then he heard stomping feet coming from the corridor, with one set of footsteps much heavier than the others. Ben pulled Five out of the way right when the door shot out from the outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it occured to me that there was no reason for the Commission to have buildings only in the US, which gave me a perfect opportunity to take the Hargreeves (+Ray) to my own corner of the world! Fun facts: the city of Rouen is where Joan of Arc was executed and I've been told by English speakers that its name sounded more like a growl than a word. :)


	10. Chapter 10

Luther kicked the door in and barged into the room first, with Diego hot on his heels. Peering around Luther’s massive bulk, the first thing Vanya saw was a skinny teenage boy in a white hospital outfit, battered and bloody, looking like he was leaning on something invisible—Ben, most likely—to stay upright. So this was Five, the last of her siblings, the one who’d time-traveled back and forth, who’d brought them to the sixties. The one she’d been close to as a child, according to Klaus. Vanya stared at him, scrutinized his bruised face, trying to muster some forgotten sisterly feeling toward him, the hint of a memory. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t feel anything beyond basic empathy at seeing someone so young-looking in such a bad state. 

The second thing Vanya saw in the room was a blond woman crawling on the floor, reaching for the underside of the table in front of her. 

“Shit!” Diego swore, throwing a knife at the same time. “Luther, get Five!”

Diego’s knife curved unnaturally and planted itself in the woman’s arm, but not before she’d managed to press something under the table. Vanya expected an alarm to start ringing, but only silence followed her action. Had Diego managed to stop her? Had she touched something else than a button? They didn’t have the time to wonder about it; Luther scooped Five in his arms over a garbled sound of protest and they all dashed into the corridor after him.

Vanya didn’t remember enough of her past to know whether she’d been an athletic person, but her body seemed to be sending her signals that she wasn’t. All too soon, she started getting out of breath, her lungs violently protesting the effort, buckets of sweat pouring down her face and her back, sticking her shirt to her skin. Unable to keep up with the others, she found herself trailing at the back of the group, behind even Klaus, and got panicked that they wouldn’t realize she’d been struggling and would leave without her. _Wait! Wait for me!_ She didn’t even have enough breath to call for them. Tears blurred her vision and she stupidly tripped on her own feet, her tired legs out of her control. Before she could fall, though, someone yanked her up by the arm. 

It was Allison, her expression one of grim determination. “I’ve got you,” she said fiercely. “You’re not getting left behind.”

With Allison holding her by the arm, Vanya had no choice but keep up, carried along by her sister’s powerful strides. The building, which had been quiet since they’d snuck inside, was now coming alive around them. The sound of snapping voices and thumping feet bounced across the corridors, as though a whole army was stampeding toward them.

“Where the hell were they before?” Diego shouted. “Klaus!”

“How is it my fault?” Klaus squeaked. “Ben says he only saw a few guards!”

Five, held by Luther in a princess carry, mumbled something indistinct and Allison said, “They were obviously waiting for us! They’re going to block the exits!” Five’s voice rose again, more insistent this time. Allison snapped, “No, you’re _not_ teleporting us! Just shut up and let us save you, Five!”

They arrived at a T-shaped intersections and Luther, who was sprinting ahead, swerved right, hopefully because he remembered where they’d come from—unlike Vanya, who had been completely turned around by their mad run.

“Wait, Luther, wait!” Klaus panted, a hand raised toward his brother. “Ben is saying—”

They’d already all followed Luther and when he stopped suddenly in his tracks, Diego stumbled to avoid crashing into his back. Before Vanya could see what had alarmed him, Luther spun around and hunched his back, arms curling protectively around Five’s body. The hissing of bullets cutting through the air and the dull thuds they made when impacting Luther’s back resounded in the corridor. 

“Go!” Luther yelled, dumping Five in the arms of Diego, who faltered under his brother’s weight. “I’ll cover for your escape! Get him out of here!”

“Luther, no!” Allison cried out. 

The bullets kept pattering against Luther’s back— _tack-tack-tack._ The sound rattled inside Vanya’s head, the echo of it swelling in her chest. The feeling was familiar from when she’d tried using her powers in that old French farm, but this time it felt stronger, a living thing pulsing behind her rib. Gasping, she saw that a small nugget of white light was throbbing at the center of her chest.

She jerked her arm out of Allison’s grip. “I—I’ll help him. We’ll catch up with you.”

“Vanya!” 

Allison tried to grab her arm again but Vanya swatted her hand away. “Just go!”

“Guys,” Klaus called, “Ben is saying that he’s got a safe route out of here. I’ll send him back for Luther and Vanya!”

He pulled at Allison’s arm and Allison finally stopped resisting. Diego threw Five over his shoulder and together they took off, back the way they’d come from. Vanya turned again toward Luther, who was still using himself as a shield, his chin tucked against his chest. From under his spread arms, Vanya could see the approaching silhouettes of uniformed guards. Luther wouldn’t be able to keep them away forever, and he and Vanya wouldn’t have the time to escape and go after the others unless Vanya did something. Trusting Luther to keep her safe for a few more minutes, she directed her focus inward, at the ball of warm energy lodged beneath her sternum. She let it grow with each new impact sound, let it live inside her, take up space in her lungs. The warmth spread through her body, down her limbs to the tips of her fingers and toes, making her bones vibrate with it.

As the sound energy grew, Vanya’s mind expanded. 

_Welcome home, Miss Vanya._

Images, fragments of conversations, flashes of meaning poured into her head, a torrent that jostled her like a paper boat. Panic accompanied them, a bone-deep chill of dread, as the horror of her memories threatened to overwhelm her. 

_Five, wait. I haven’t seen you in a long time and I don’t want to lose you again._ A boy in a school uniform, hands in his pocket, his expression distant and closed off. Sitting in an armchair as she cleaned a cut on his arm, observing her with guarded eyes. 

She remembered him now, Five, her missing brother who’d ran away one November day, leaving her even more alone than she’d been before. 

_Vanya, that’s not fair._ Allison. 

_There’s nothing fair about being your sister!_

_I heard a rumor—_ Allison holding her hands to her throat, blood spilling between them as she tried to speak but only made herself bleed faster. _No, I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean to kill Allison!_

But Allison wasn’t dead, though she _was_ scarred. She wasn’t dead and she’d forgiven Vanya, had held her in her arms and said she’d missed her, had helped her run right now. 

_This is your home._ Safe in Luther’s arms, until he started squeezing too hard and she thought he was going to kill her, choke her to death with his considerable strength, her heart thundering in panic as the walls and ceiling shook in response to her power. 

Luther regretted what he’d done. He’d apologized for it and now he was using his own body as a shield to protect her.

 _None of your siblings bear any responsibility for what happened to you as a child._ Pogo, thrown in the air and impaled onto antlers. Leonard, battered and stabbed by a whirlpool of all the objects in the room. The audience at the Icarus theater running away screaming. Her brothers, suspended in the air as her power sucked the life out of them. 

_I did all this! I did it knowing what I was doing, just because I was too angry to care. I wanted the whole world to bleed. I did want that._

The realization was crushing, its weight too much to bear, its truth too shameful to face. She wanted to shrink to nothing, to disappear, to bury her head under her arms and to not see or hear anything ever again.

_We just want you to know that… we’re still your family. Right, guys?_

Hiccupping with her sobs, Vanya opened her eyes. Energy flooded out of her in bright white waves and Luther was holding his arms crossed over his head to protect himself from it. She was hurting him! She couldn’t control it and was going to kill Luther!

“Vanya!” Luther shouted over the roar of Vanya’s uncontrolled power. “Vanya, it’s all right!”

_You’re nothing!_

“Vanya, can you hear me?”

 _You’re_ weak!

“You can do it, Vanya!”

_No! No, I’m not weak!_

If she couldn’t get her power under control, she would kill Luther and maybe the others too if they hadn’t had the time to leave the building. She would have no excuse this time, just her own inability to get over her self-pity and get a grip. She couldn’t make up for what she’d done but she could be _better._

_Breathe. You need to breathe._

Her nose was already stuffy from crying and it was hard to draw that first breath, but she forced it in, kept it trapped in her lungs for two heartbeats, then released it through her nose. She did it again, then a third time, then a fourth time, until her breathing was less erratic and smoothly flowed in and out. As it did, the unnatural wind she’d caused started to ebb. The energy was still around her, but it wasn’t rolling out of her with the force of a storm. Keeping it under control felt like teetering on a tightrope, but it _was_ responding to her.

“Luther,” she said in a voice that only shook a little. “Get out of the way.”

Luther didn’t protest, didn’t discuss it, but just threw himself to the side, flattening against a wall. The guards across the hallway lowered the arms they’d used to protect themselves. Realizing that the storm had abated, they were raising their weapons again. A few fired their guns and Vanya threw all the energy that simmered inside her at them. 

—-

Though he was all bones, Five was heavy as shit. Head and arms hanging down Diego’s back, he kept making weak unintelligible sounds of protest, but didn’t trying to blink away, which meant that he probably couldn’t. Diego knew he might be aggravating some of his wounds by carrying him this way, but the present concern was speed and mobility. If they couldn’t get out of this place, Five wouldn’t be the only one to die. 

“Right!” Klaus was shouting, presumably relaying directions he got from Ben. “Then left—no, no, no, not left, not left, go right again!”

The walls trembled. “Is that Vanya?” Allison asked breathlessly. She slowed down her run to a trot, looking up anxiously at the ceiling. “If she takes the building down, she and Luther will—”

She slowed down even further, looking like she was thinking about turning around. Diego spit out an expletive and grabbed her by the arm. “Let’s get Five out of here first and then we’ll see! Allison, come _on_!”

They finally got to an emergency exit and Diego’s heart surged in hope, but since of course their lives couldn’t go right for five minutes in a row, when Klaus threw himself against the crash bar, the door didn’t budge.

“What the hell?” Klaus exclaimed indignantly, kicking at the door. “Are French people so lax about security? Who locks emergency exits?”

“People who don’t want us to leave this place alive,” Allison said through clenched teeth. “I told you they would block all the exits!”

“A whole lot of fucking good it does us now, Allison!” Diego groused. “What are we going to do?”

The building shook again, plaster dust raining on them from the ceiling. Five wasn’t protesting or moving anymore, a dead weight on his shoulder, which was more than a little worrying. Diego was buzzing with pent-up adrenaline, itching for something to _do_ , to fight, a way out of here. If they died right next to the exit, he was going to be so goddamn pissed. 

“Open the fuck up!” Klaus was yelling at the door. “Open sesame! Ben, do something!”

“Klaus,” Diego said, rolling his eyes. “This isn’t going to—”

Klaus threw his hands forward in what looked like a gesture of frustration, but with the movement a dozen of bluish forms materialized and rushed at the door in a shimmering upsurge. 

“Holy shit,” Klaus said in a breath. “I didn’t even know they were there.”

“Are those—” Allison said, eyebrows quirked in puzzlement.

“—fucking _ghosts_?” Diego finished. 

The ghosts were of a variety of ages, genders and races. There was a young dark-haired and dark-skinned woman, barely more than a teenager, wearing a floating sundress, a group of three men in military camouflage, a shrunken old woman wearing a headscarf tied under her chin, a talk bulky black man in overalls, and more. They made no sound except when they impacted the door, and swarmed around Diego and his siblings, dizzying waves of them, chilling the air until Diego’s cheeks stung from the cold and his breath formed a white whisp of fog.

“Guess those fuckers from the Commission have a body count,” Klaus commented as the ghosts crashed against the door like the sea against a barrier of reefs. 

The door rattled under their assault, again and again, until it burst open and the ghosts streamed out of the building, dissipating in the daylight as they did. Diego adjusted Five’s weight on his shoulder, a twinge of worry in his chest when the movement didn’t produce any sound from his brother, and then he, Allison and Klaus exited through the open door, eager to be out—

—and were welcomed by a crowd of guards pointing what looked like HK45s at them. The woman that Diego had stabbed earlier stood among them, a trail of tacky drying blood under her nose and a makeshift bandage tied around her arm. 

“Good,” she said. “You’re finally here.”

“Klaus,” Diego uttered through the corner of his mouth. “Can you summon more ghosts?”

“I think I’m tapped out,” Klaus said, though he clenched his fists, blue lights rippling around them. 

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” said the Handler—it had to be her—as she smiled smugly in a way that made Diego want to stab her in the throat. “Trying anything will result in a bullet being put in your siblings’ heads. This warning is addressed to all of you, by the way.”

“What do you want?” Allison bit out. 

“To be rid of you,” the Handler said chipperly, opening her hands as if to say, ‘obviously.’ “Ideally, I’d like to kill you before I kill your brother Five, unless he’s dead already,” she added, flicking a cold eyebrow at Diego and his burden.

“He’s not dead!” Diego exclaimed, though he wasn’t actually all that sure. He coiled his arm more tightly around Five’s legs, securing his hold. “And we’re not letting you touch a hair on him.”

“This is sweet,” the Handler said flatly. “If he can hear us, I’m sure that Number Five’s shriveled heart has been warmed by this pronouncement of sibling devotion. Now, if you would please surrender. I could execute you right here and now, but as I said, this isn’t my preferred scenario.”

“Go suck a bag of dicks!” Klaus called out, shaking his fist.

“Such poetry,” the Handler said. “I see why you hold them so dear, Five. They’re clearly worth—”

She was interrupted by a murmur that rose among the guards, some of who turned away from Diego and his siblings to point their guns at a new target. The crowd of guards parted, giving way to a woman who was holding her hands up in the air as one of the guards ushered her at gun point. 

“We caught this one lurking around,” the guard said. 

“Hi, mom,” the woman said—or rather, ‘mum’, as she spoke with a British accent. She smiled brightly as though she’d just happened to chance on the Handler during a Sunday walk. Then, more surprisingly, she looked Diego directly in the eye and said, “Hi, Diego.”

“What?” Diego said. On his shoulder, Five shifted and coughed, so at least he wasn’t dead. 

“Darling,” the Handler said, shaking her head disappointedly. “I’d like to think that you’ve come to your senses and decided to join us again, but I know you too well to believe that.”

The strange new woman snorted and said, “No way in _hell_ I’d join you again. All I want is for you to die.”

“That hurt,” the Handler said, pressing a gloved hand against her chest. “After everything I’ve done for you. Children are so ungrateful.”

“Everything you’ve _done_ for me? You mean like—”

Diego didn’t hear the rest of her sentence because at that moment, a bluish glow blinded his left eye and the swish of sucked air alerted his ear. A split-second later, Diego was holding onto nothing; Five was gone, blinked away from his grip.

“Shit, Five—”

“Five!” Allison screamed.

Diego didn’t have to wonder for long where his wayward brother had gone, because Five reappeared a foot in front of him, crumpled on the ground and unmoving, his face pressed in the dewy grass. Diego lurched forward, only holding back when he saw that all the guns had swiveled at him. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he yelled instead at his brother, his heart skipping a beat when Five didn’t even stir.

“I knew you were reckless, Five,” said the Handler, “but not to the point of stupidity. You know you can’t fight anymore. What did you think you would—” She cut herself off and Diego saw her face bleach from color, her round eyes turning toward the woman who was presumably her daughter. “Oh, sh—”

The strange woman warped space exactly the way Five did and blinked out, reappearing right behind the Handler and snapping her neck in one quick professional motion. When the Handler collapsed to the ground, her head disturbingly skewed, many things happened at once. The more alert guards shot at the woman, who disappeared in a blue distortion. With their target gone, the frantic guards directed their shots at Diego, Klaus and Allison. Klaus yelped and covered his head with his arms. Diego, following an instinct that he couldn’t quite explain, threw his free hand forward and the bullets _stopped_ , hovering in the air as though Diego was keeping them there. _Holy shit_.

Allison looked at him wide-eyed for a second and then at the guards, who were getting ready to shoot again. “ _I heard a rumor—_ ” Allison’s voice thundered as though she were talking through a loud-speaker. “— _that you all dropped your weapons_.”

The first row of guards, about five or six of them, obeyed the command. The guards behind them looked ready to shoot again, so Diego flicked his hands and the bullets he’d been holding in the air flew at the guards. There was a series of sick impact sounds. Over the cries and gurgles of the wounded, the guards who were still unharmed scampered off, tripping over the bodies of their fallen comrades.

“Yeah, you better run!” Klaus shouted, cupping a hand around his mouth. 

As Allison rushed to check on Five, another swooshing sound made Diego draw one of his knives. The woman who’d killed the Handler was there again, dispassionately looking down at Five, who Allison was gathering in her arms. Five was out cold, his head lolling against Allison’s shoulder.

“Is he dead?” the woman asked. 

“Don’t get any closer, Lila,” Allison said, her eyes narrowed in wariness, her arm wrapping protectively around Five’s shoulders. 

“You know her?” Diego asked accusingly. “Who the hell is she?”

The woman, Lila, looked at Diego again with deep, dark eyes circled with black, holding Diego’s eyes for so long that he wanted to squirm. She looked away after a moment, wetted her lips and said, “No matter how many times I hear you say this, it still hurts. Stupid, huh?”

“What?”

“You knew each other?” Allison said, her eyes flicking from Lila to Diego. “From one of the loops?”

“Oh my god,” Klaus said, laughter creeping into his voice. “Were you two a thing? Diego, you—”

“Klaus, shut up,” Diego snapped.

“Shutting up, sir!”

“That’s not shutting up if I can still hear you talking.”

Klaus mimed zipping his mouth and Diego scowled at him. It was easier to get annoyed at Klaus rather than look at Lila, who, he could admit now that no one was actively trying to kill them, was actually pretty hot. Had she been his girlfriend in one of those loops? He… didn’t mind the idea.

“Diego, stop looking at her like that,” Allison said in a commanding voice, which always made Diego want to do the exact contrary of what she asked. “She wants to kill Five!”

“Is that true?” Diego asked, adjusting his grip on his knife.

“Well, he killed my parents, so I think I’m a bit entitled!” Lila said. “But I’ve given up on that idea.”

“Are we supposed to believe this?” Allison said. “What about when you made me attack him?”

“I didn’t order you to kill him, did I?” Lila replied. “I was just playing a bit. But I don’t want to kill him anymore. Not actively, at least—I haven’t forgiven him and I wouldn’t shed a tear if he died from something else. But I won’t do it myself, because you asked me not to, Diego. No, because you _begged_ me not to.”

“I, uh, what?” Diego felt his face get warm and he glared at Klaus when he saw him snicker. “I don’t remember you, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t _beg_. I don’t beg.”

“Yes, you did, you macho man,” Lila said, rolling her eyes. “With tears in your eyes, you did. I don’t pretend to understand it, but you love that murdering arsehole. And he loves you—all of you. So, you know, killing him won’t bring my parents back, but it would make you sad, and…” Lila shrugged, looked down and kicked at an invisible stone in the grass. “…even if you don’t remember me, I don’t want that.”

Diego was spared having to find a response to that declaration by yet another flash of light that revealed Herb and Dot. They were dressed for outdoor, both wearing long coats and hats—Herb a fedora hat and Dot a round dainty one with a small veil—and both holding onto a black briefcase. Herb’s gaze fell on the Handler’s body and he let go of the briefcase to approach her, gingerly nudging her head with the tip of his dress shoe.

“Is she—” he asked hesitantly.

“Yep, as dead as it gets,” Lila said. “ _Finally_.”

“Oh, good for you!” Dot said.

“Wait a minute,” Allison said. “Are you all… working together?”

“More or less,” Lila said, at the same time that Herb said, “Yes.”

“So why did you… You _knew_ where our siblings were. You knew that your mother didn’t have them and I thought the whole purpose of your grand kidnapping plan was to let Five know that they were safe. Why did you attack us and then made us coerce you into giving us that briefcase?”

“ _You_ gave them that briefcase?” Dot said, shaking her head in mild disappointment. “Oh, Lila. It was really inconvenient to have them show up at Headquarters.”

“Yeah,” Herb said, “it really screwed up the whole plan that—”

“Fuck your plan!” Allison shouted, her voice vibrating with fury. “Five almost died because we went there!”

“As I said,” Lila said airily, “I don’t really care if he dies. I didn’t expect him not to remember me, so it was hard to resist messing with—”

“Uh, guys?” Klaus said. “Ben has gone to check up on Luther and Vanya, and he said—”

Before Klaus could finish, the building trembled again and the sound of several windows breaking at once exploded in the distance. For a moment, Diego fully expected the whole building to come crashing down in front of them, the way the Academy had done the night Vanya had gone berserk on it; but after a very long, harrowing minute, the shaking subsided and all they could hear was the fluttering and the cries from a flock of birds that had been scared off by the noise. 

“Are— are Luther and Vanya all right?” Allison said, her eyes crinkling with worry. “It looks like Vanya has gotten it under control this time.”

“Or they’ve both been captured,” Diego said somberly. “Okay, I’m going—”

“No need,” Klaus said. “Ben says they’re fine. The guards are… less fine. Luther and Vanya are making their way back to us.”

“How was Ben able to check on them and come back so fast?” Diego asked.

“He’s a ghost, Diego,” Klaus said. “He can just go… poof! I mean, he doesn’t like doing it much ‘cause I guess it makes him feel self-conscious about the whole being dead thing, so instead he just follows me around and stare disapprovingly … But yeah, he can blink anywhere. By the way, Ben says your zipper is down.”

Even though Klaus had made some version of that joke approximatively a million times throughout their childhood, Diego couldn’t help reflexively glancing down. Of course, his zipper wasn’t down. Klaus smiled innocently and Lila guffawed.

“Your brother is funny,” she said. “Top-notch sense of humor.”

“Well, thank you,” Klaus said, smiling appreciatively.

“Don’t encourage him,” Diego said, then felt awkward at the familiar tit-for-tat reply to a near-stranger who wanted his brother to die. Lila gave him a look of surprise and… was it hopefulness? Diego looked away, unable to deal with this right now.

“Vanya! Luther!” Allison cried out. Thankful for the distraction, Diego turned toward the building and saw Vanya and Luther emerge from it.

“You two okay?” he asked, giving his brother and sister a once-over. 

Vanya’s tangled hair was half in her pale face and the back of Luther’s sweater was shredded to ribbons, but neither of them looked badly wounded. At least they were both up and walking under their own power. 

“I’m fine,” Vanya said with a slightly interrogative intonation, as though she wasn’t quite sure. “But Luther is—”

“I’m all right,” Luther said quickly. “Just bruises.”

“You were shot! Multiple times!”

“Really, it’s fine.”

“You should—” Vanya’s nervous eyes stopped on Five in Allison’s arms and she gasped. “Five! What’s wrong with him? Is he—"

She joined Allison and went down on her knees in the grass, her hand reaching out and brushing the wild strands of Five’s hair that stuck out from under the bandage on his head. He didn’t react at all to the touch; his bare feet were starting to get bluish from cold.

“He’s breathing,” Allison said to Vanya. “His pulse is a little thready, though. He used his power when he probably shouldn’t have and I don’t know what this has done to him.” She glanced up. “Do you have your memories back? The way you said Five’s name…”

Vanya gave a small nod and said, “Yeah. I remember everything.” She pushed the hair off her face, tucking most of it behind her ear. “I know I’ve said it already, but I’m really sorry.”

“We’re sorry too,” Allison said, the line of her mouth softening with the hint of a smile. 

“All right, now that we’ve established how sorry everyone is, can we get out of here before a zealous guard decides to shoot us down anyway?” Diego said impatiently. 

He still had a knife in his hand, and he’d been keeping an eye and an ear out for anyone who might try to sneak on them. It made him nervous how exposed they all were, with an enemy building on one side and a goddamn forest on the other. Lila had joined Herb and Dot, and the three of them were conversing in lower voices with each other, which didn’t do anything for Diego’s nerves. Who knew what they might be conspiring about now?

“We should maybe get Five to a hospital,” Luther said, his brow deeply furrowed. “He really doesn’t look good.”

“How are we going to explain what happened to him?” Klaus said. “What if he wakes up disoriented and, I don’t know, attack someone?”

“We can provide medical assistance,” Herb piped up, turning away from Lila and Dot. “Get someone to check on him and give you medication and equipment as needed. You know, as a ‘sorry we kidnapped you’ gift.”

“Medication? What sort?” Klaus asked, and groaned when Diego elbowed him in the ribs. 

“Medication for _Five_ , not for you,” he said.

“Yeah, of course, I’m just asking,” Klaus said, looking affronted. 

“We’re going back to the _gite_ , then,” Luther said. He shifted on his feet and made a pained grimace. 

“We’ll check up on you later,” Dot said warmly, as though they were all buddies meeting up for a drink. Without the promise of medical assistance, Diego would have told those Commission assholes to fuck off. “Take care of Number Five. Get some rest.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t say no to lying down for a bit,” Luther said with another barely concealed wince.

“Not gonna faint on us, are you, bro?” Diego asked, giving Luther a closer look. His brother did look a bit pale and sweaty.

“’Course not,” Luther said, crouching and taking Five from the arms of a reluctant Allison. “Let’s just go. I’ve had enough of this place.”

Now was a pronouncement that they could all agree on. 

—-

Waking up felt like swimming up from the deep dark depths of an ocean, a conscious, overreaching effort that took up all of Five’s dwindling strength. It was a sense of urgency, of unfinished business, that made him resist letting himself be dragged down to the darkness. It would be easier to sink, but the Handler was still out there; his _siblings_ were still out there and maybe fighting for their lives. He needed to make sure they weren’t getting themselves stupidly killed, and then, but only then, he would maybe rest a little. 

Prying his eyelids open, letting them drop down, opening them again, gave him unhelpful flashes of a pale-yellow ceiling. This wasn’t his room at the Academy or Allison’s living room. This didn’t look like a motel’s ceiling either. On the bright side, this also looked nothing like a cell or a hospital room, and that last thought kept Five from panicking. The surface under his back felt like an actual, rather soft mattress. He was in bed and the room smelled of beeswax polish. He tried turning his head to get a better look at the rest of it, but the motion made his brain feel like it was sloshing around in his skull, so he stopped and instead tried to take in as much as he could by only moving his eyes. He could make out a window and curtains, patterned with colorful motives that Five’s vision was too fuzzy to discern—the window was double-casement, with paneled panes, and the wooden framing was painted a blue-green color. Was this place even in the US? The Commission could have taken him anywhere in the world, but this seemed like too nice a room for the Handler to accommodate him with, unless she was trying to mind-fuck him in some way. 

Looking sideway made muffled pain pulse under his skull, but at least it gave him the vision of another window, and most importantly of Allison, sitting in a blue-green wicker chair. Her eyes were closed and her head rested on her open hand, her elbow propped on the chair’s arm. Five released a stuttering breath. He still didn’t know where the hell he was, but suddenly it didn’t matter anymore. Allison wouldn’t be nonchalantly snoozing at his bedside if the rest of their family were still in danger. 

His breath must have been noisier than he’d thought, because Allison’s eyes flew open and her elbow slipped. “Five! Oh my god, you’re awake! How’re you feeling?”

Another look showed Five that closer to the bed was an IV pole with a bag hanging from it; though the sight had alarmed him when he’d been the Handler’s prisoner, he felt rather apathetic about it now. He supposed he needed whatever was in there.

“Aaaah—” _I’m fine_ , he wanted to say, but to his frustration, he found that the act of speaking was still as hard as he remembered it being the last time he was conscious.

“Ben said that you had trouble speaking,” Allison said, her forehead wrinkling. “Apparently you had a stroke.”

“B-bb?” So it _had_ been Ben and not just him losing his fucking mind. He wetted his lips and opened his mouth to try speaking again, but Allison talked over him, divining his question, “Klaus summoned him on the day of his funeral and he’s apparently been hanging around since then. Klaus’ powers are either evolving or he’s discovering new aspects of them—actually, I think all of our powers are evolving, but that’s a topic for later—so he can make Ben visible or able to touch things. If you want to, you’ll have the opportunity to talk to him later.”

Oh. Five turned his eyes to the ceiling, trying to process the information. A way to talk to Ben again wasn’t something he’d ever envisioned, even in his most wildly optimistic scenarios. He breathed, an oddly arduous task. His whole body felt like it was encased in a layer of clay, weighting him down. 

“In the meantime,” Allison went on, the sound of her voice distant through the buzzing in Five’s ears, “I brought something for you to write on. I… I know what it’s like to have trouble communicating. Though you might have some difficulties writing too.”

Five laboriously extracted his hands from under the quilt and understood what Allison meant when he saw that two fingers of his left hand were taped together. A few of his fingernails were missing and he could feel the phantom pain of getting them torn out throb dully. Allison gave him a notepad with large-squared graph paper and a pencil, which Five had an awkward time holding, both because of his taped fingers and because the other fingers weren’t responding to him properly. In large, shaky block letters, he wrote, ‘ _HANDLER?’_

“She’s dead,” Allison said. “Lila mirrored your power and killed her. Which I assume was your intention, otherwise I can’t explain your frankly suicidal impulse to use your power when you’d already given yourself a fucking _stroke_ with it.”

‘ _WORKED OUT,’_ Five wrote. 

“Yeah, well, don’t look so smug,” Allison said. “I’m mad at you anyway.”

If he hadn’t been wary of moving too much, Five would have shrugged. Allison would get over it. He wrote, ‘THE OTHERS?’

“They’re all right. Turns out that the kidnapping wasn’t quite a kidnapping. Well.”

Allison told him how she’d been transported to where their siblings were detained and had discovered that Herb, Dot and their merry band of rebels were behind the capture. They claimed that they were trying to keep Five’s family safe, though knowing the Commission’s mindset, Five suspected that they might have consciously or unconsciously wanted to coerce him a bit too. Oh, well. It had prevented his siblings from getting killed yet again, so Five couldn’t be too mad about how it had all turned out. Honestly, he didn’t have it in himself to be upset about much right now, either because he was worn out or because of the drugs he was on. 

“I also wanted to say something about what happened at Headquarters,” Allison said.

Oh, god. Five had really assumed he would die after one last bloody battle at the time, so he hadn’t thought through the ramifications of what he’d asked of Allison. Or at least, he selfishly had assumed that he wouldn’t have to deal with them.

‘DON’T—” he started writing, the lines of his letters leaving deep furrows in the paper. “—BE—”

“I’m not apologizing or anything,” Allison said hurriedly. “Rumoring you, and leaving you behind… It made me feel like shit, but I know that’s what you wanted, so apologizing wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

Five’s pencil hovered over the paper. If she wasn’t apologizing, then did it mean that _he_ had to apologize? He didn’t regret what had happened, but he did feel a bit bad that he’d made _her_ feel bad. He knew how she felt about her power, but he hadn’t seen any other choices at the time. 

“I’ve thought about it a lot while waiting for you to wake up and I don’t want you to think that… that you’re expendable. That it doesn’t matter to us if you live or die. What you said about us living for years without you, so it wouldn’t matter if we had to do it again, that’s bullshit. You lived without us for a lot longer, didn’t you? And it didn’t make you stop caring. We missed you while you were gone and we would miss you if you died. We want to get to know you again—I mean, _I_ want it, I know Vanya want it too, and I’m pretty sure our blockhead brothers feel the same, whether they’d admit it or not.”

Five swallowed painfully. He looked back at the ceiling and breathed. As a child dreaming of reuniting with his family, he’d fantasized about hearing them saying those exact words so often that he’d started feeling like it could never happen for real. Some fantasies were too self-indulgent to come true. As an adult, he’d known that you shouldn’t wish for too many things, and he’d decided to focus on one main goal, leaving the rest to become background noise. Allison rested a hand on his right one and the touch caused a little shock of static cling; her hand felt too heavy, but he didn’t have the energy to push it away.

“Do you need anything?” Allison asked. “Otherwise, you maybe should go back to sleep. You need rest.”

Painstakingly, Five wrote, ‘SEE BEN NOW?’

“All right,” Allison said, standing up. “I’ll go get Klaus—they’re kind of a package deal now.”

She was almost at the door when Five called for her attention by clearing his throat. She turned around, her eyebrow raised expectantly. On the top of his notebook, Five tapped in Morse code, _Thanks_.

Her mouth turned up at the corner. “Any time.”

As Allison closed the door behind her, Five closed his eyes, just to rest them for a moment. He must have dozed off, because it felt like only a few seconds had passed until he heard the door open again, making him startle. 

“Hey, buddy,” Klaus said, rapping his fingers on the door. His smile looked entirely manufactured—not like one of his ‘I don’t care about anything’ fake smiles, but like he was trying to soothe Five, which was some bullshit right there. “You look, uh… You look g—well, not like you’re dead anymore, so that’s progress.”

Allison, who stood behind him, rolled her eyes and said to Five, “A vessel burst in one of your eyes. It looks pretty freaky.”

“Does he understand what we’re saying?” Klaus stage-whispered to Allison, twisting his neck to look at her and pointing a finger at his temple. “Is everything in working order up there?”

Five offered Klaus the middle finger of his right hand and Allison gave his back a shove so he would stop blocking the doorway. Klaus theatrically stumbled forward, as though Allison had pushed him much harder than she must have.

“All right, all right, that was a legitimate question! After all his brain has taken quite a blow.” Klaus sat down on the edge of Five’s bed, making the mattress shift with his weight, and he glanced to the side at an empty spot. “Yeah, I’m getting to it! You’ve become such an entitled shit, you know. Did it occur to you that _I_ might want to check on Five too?”

Five looked at that empty spot too, realizing that this was where Ben must be, a strange feeling churning at the pit of his stomach. All he knew of Ben’s death was what he’d read in Vanya’s book, which had been more about the aftermath than about the death itself. In many ways, Ben’s death hadn’t felt real to him, despite his brother’s glaring absence in 2019. Seeing him as a ghost would make it real. 

“You ready?” Klaus said, and at his softer tone of voice Five understood that he hadn’t done a great job at hiding what he was feeling. So even if he wasn’t sure at all that he was ready, he nodded anyway. Avoiding it any longer would only make him a coward. “All right. It’s show time, Ben.”

Where there had been nothing that Five could see, now stood the transparent bluish image of a young man in his early thirties, dressed in all black. For a moment, Five thought there must have been a mistake, or that Klaus was messing with him, but then the apparition said, “Hey, Five. I know I look much older than when you’ve last seen me, but I’m really Ben.”

Five took a breath, letting it settle the jitteriness of his heart. He focused on the words he wanted to say—it was annoying, having to consider them so closely before speaking, how had Diego done it all those years? _Diego_ , the hottest head of them all. “Be-en,” Five managed to utter. “I’m sorry—”

“Oh, Five, not you too. I’ve been through this with the others already—there’s nothing to be sorry about. Why would you be sorry anyway, you weren’t—” Ben let his sentence trail off, understanding floating across his face. “Okay, I see what you’re thinking. Honestly, who can tell if you would have been able to do anything? Maybe you would have, I don’t know. But if you’d never time-traveled, we would all have died in 2019. So, you know, I think it’s a fair trade on the whole.”

Fair. There was nothing fair about this. Fairness was a concept that humans had invented to make themselves feel better about how much some things sucked. Five looked away, to the window on the right of his bed, out of which he could see the green foliage of trees gently swaying under the pressure of the wind. His face felt wet and his throat hurt.

“Ben, I think you broke him!” Klaus said. When Five glared at him, he added, “You’re crying.”

Well, sue him, it had been a hard couple of… days, weeks, months, whatever. It had been a hard life. Allison looked a little misty-eyed herself, so there. In a minute, Klaus would probably start blubbering too, as he’d always been an sympathetic crier. From the hallway out of the door, Five could hear the deep rumble of arguing voices, Luther and Diego, interlaced with Vanya’s higher pitch. Allison yelled at them to tone it down, that Five was tired and needed calm. This made Five want to laugh, long and hard, hysterically. What a mess. They were such a mess. His brothers and sisters; his fucking _family_ , all of them under the same roof. How long had he wanted this? How many sleepless nights had he spent dreaming about it, how many times had he gotten back up when he just wanted to lie down and die, picturing it in his mind? He didn’t have to imagine it anymore—he had it now, so real it hurt. 

“You can cry, Five,” Ben said. _Well, thank you, Ben_ , Five thought peevishly, _I was just waiting for your permission_. “We’ll stay here for a bit, if you don’t mind. You can let us know when you want us to leave. Take your time.”

There was never enough time, except when there was too much of it. Right now, Five needed a minute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next week's chapter will be more of an epilogue and then we'll say goodbye to this fic! Hope you've enjoyed this chapter. :)


	11. Chapter 11

Vanya closed her eyes for a brief moment, letting the morning sunlight warm her face. The drawn-out mooing of cows echoed from the pasture behind the farm, a bucolic background music. Vanya opened her eyes. She was sitting outside on the patio at the aluminum garden table, with the Norman half-timbered house they’d been staying at behind her; further away, Klaus was lying on the lawn, his head cushioned by his folded arm, smoking and looking at the clouds lazily drifting in the sky. 

The front door opened and Diego came out, holding a mug in his hand. “Morning,” Vanya said, and Diego grunted back amiably. He dragged another one of the chairs, scraping the legs over the stone pavement, and sat across from her at the table. 

“He been here long?” Diego asked after a long stretch of comfortable silence, jerking his chin at Klaus on the lawn.

“I don’t know, he was already there when I came out,” Vanya said. “I suppose it’s the right kind of weather to be lying in the grass.”

“I can’t wait until we leave,” Diego said. “I’m tired of this countryside bullshit. I’m tired of everyone speaking French.”

“We’re in France; of course everyone speaks French.”

“Their language is a fucking torture device and they should know it.”

Vanya winced sympathetically; as a child, language classes had been the worse for Diego. “I like the _gite_ , though,” she said. “It’s peaceful.” 

Though the two places felt very different, the quiet reminded Vanya of Sissy’s farm. She missed Sissy and Harlan; she hadn’t managed yet to bring up to the others the fact that she’d like to swing by 1963 and say goodbye before they went back home in 2019. 

Luther joined them with a mug of his own and settled at the table. He took a sip from his drink and sighed contentedly. “It’s nice out here,” he said. “Other than the birds and the cows, it’s so silent.”

“Those cows make such a ruckus,” Diego said. “It’s not silent at all.”

“That’s part of the charm,” Luther said. 

“What charm? Have you ever heard anything less charming than a cow mooing?”

Vanya let her brothers’ mild bickering about cows lull her into a slightly meditative state. They were nearing the end of July 2002 and had been in France for three months now. The past few months had been strange, almost out of time—it was the foreignness of the setting, mostly, the lack of work-chores-sleep routine, as well as the time spent in quasi harmony with her siblings. This was a rather new feeling. It wouldn’t be fair to say that they’d never had any good times when they were children, and now that she was able to better distance herself from her own raw emotions, she could admit it. But their father’s stifling presence, his high expectations of them and his lack of expectation of her, had always weighed on the whole family, even after his death. It finally felt like they were starting to get free of it. Vanya found it odd how little her siblings seemed to resent her for trying to kill them and destroying the world. It might have been because of their own guilt, or because they had a chance at reversing it and she hadn’t actually killed Allison—she didn’t think they would have forgiven her if she’d killed Allison and she wouldn’t have forgiven herself either. Whatever it was, Vanya would take that fresh start. Being her best self from now on was how she wanted to use it.

“You all right, Vanya?” Luther asked. He often asked her this, and she was beginning to accept that it was out of genuine solicitude and not because he was afraid she would lose control of her powers.

“Yeah, I was just thinking. I agree with you, I like it here. It’ll be weird to get back to… real life, I guess. Whatever it’ll look like.”

“Are we still leaving today?” Luther asked.

“Good luck convincing Five otherwise,” Diego said. 

Allison and Ray emerged from the house, sitting at the table too. Allison looked a little subdued, but when Vanya mouthed at her ‘you okay?’ she just shrugged and smiled ruefully. She must have asked Ray if he would come with them to 2019 and he must have said no. Allison hadn’t had high hopes that he would agree, but it must hurt anyway.

“Are you drinking that milky coffee stuff again?” Diego said, glancing inside Allison’s mug. “That shit is so gross.”

“Can’t I enjoy my breakfast in peace without you harping on my choice of drinks?” Allison complained.

“Seriously, though. Ray, man, please help me here. Don’t you think it’s gross?”

“I don’t particularly like it either,” Ray said, shifting on his chair to be able to extend his legs on the side. “But I don’t see how what I think matters.”

“Exactly,” Allison said. “It’s not a goddamn survey, Diego. _I_ like it, so _I_ drink it. I’m not forcing you to drink it too!”

“Is Five up yet?” Luther asked.

“Yeah, he’s up and he’s in a mood,” Allison said. 

She didn’t need to say more. The better he’d felt, the more execrable Five’s mood had become, probably because he’d recovered the energy to be irritated at his body’s shortcomings. He’d probably need speech and physical therapy if they ever got back to a timeline where they didn’t have to fight for their lives, but none of them had dared broach the subject with him yet.

From inside the house they heard the sound of breaking glass, followed by muffled cursing, and they all winced simultaneously. 

“He fell in the shower earlier,” Allison said, taking another sip from her mug, “and Diego felt the need to make a smart comment about geriatric care.”

“What, really?” Vanya said, looking incredulously at Diego.

“Jesus Christ, do you ever think before you speak?” Luther said.

“What?” Diego said defensively, burying his nose in his mug. “He doesn’t want our concern, so he can take our mocking instead. Prideful old man.”

“Well, he’s going to be extra prickly now, so thank you for that,” Allison said.

The door to the house flew open and they startled guiltily when Five came out, limping toward the table. He still had trouble controlling the limbs on his left side, which, as a left-handed person, annoyed him to no end. Since his last Academy uniform had been lost during his capture by the Commission, he now wore a plain blue button-up shirt and corduroy pants. His hair had grown into his eyes, making him look disturbingly teenager-like, and the bloody spot in his right eye had been reduced to a faint orange smear.

A crease formed between his eyebrows as he looked them over. “You’re—very transparent,” he said. His words were still slurred and too quiet, and he tended to keep his sentences as short as he could make them, but this was a major improvement when compared to three months ago.

“What?” Luther said, plastering on a smile and trying very unconvincingly to look innocent. “What are you talking about? We’re just enjoying breakfast in the sun, listening to the music of the French countrysi—”

“Gotta stop while you’re ahead, Luther,” Diego muttered from inside his cup, and Luther shut up.

Five very pointedly turned away from both of them to look at the rest of his siblings, a hand resting on top of the table. He made it look casual, but Vanya was fairly sure he needed the support to keep his balance. Klaus was ambling toward the patio, his still burning cigarette tucked behind his ear. Vanya couldn’t keep her eyes away from the ember-orange of the burning tip, staring in worry and fascination and wondering if Klaus was going to set fire to his own hair.

“Hey, Five, sleep well?” he asked. “If you’re up, I guess it means that we’ll be leaving soon, right?”

“Yes,” Five said. He eyed the cigarette behind Klaus’ ear critically. “You packed?”

“Packed?” Klaus said. “You mean we’ll be time-traveling with something else than the clothes on our backs? What a novel concept.”

“But we’re stopping by 1963, right?” Ray said.

Five shared a quick look with Allison, who shook her head minutely, and then said, “Of course.”

 _Do it_ , Vanya ordered herself. “So, hey,” she said with forced nonchalance, “since we’re going back to 1963 anyway, can we stop by the farm where I was staying? I, uh, I want to say goodbye to my friend Sissy.”

“Sure,” Five said. “While we’re at it.”

“Okay, thanks,” Vanya said, feeling relieved and a little silly at how scared she’d been to ask this. 

The rest of the morning was spent cleaning and tidying up the house. After a light lunch, they gave back the key to the owner and then gathered in a circle at the center of a copse of ancient oak trees, protected from the sight of curious onlookers. Luther, Diego and Allison carried the backpacks where they’d crammed the whole family’s possessions and a few essentials. Five was the one holding the briefcase that Herb and Dot had left with them and which he’d been fiddling with on and off for the past few days, doing mysterious tuning work on it. 

“Everyone ready?” he asked. A chorus of affirmative answers followed his question and he clicked something on the briefcase.

Vanya’s first time-traveling experience had been pretty traumatic, as she’d been unconscious when it’d started and Five’s control of his power had been slippery. Traveling from 1963 to 2002 and now back to 1963 with the briefcase went a lot more smoothly, leaving Vanya with only the barest impression of vertigo. She looked around and saw that they’d landed right in front of Sissy’s house, under a warm and stunningly blue sky, more vibrant than the Norman sky she’d known for the past few months. The sound of a pumping shotgun broke the quiet.

They all immediately let go of each other to hold up their hands, except for Five who was still holding the briefcase. Vanya detached herself from the group, making sure to keep her hands well in sight.

“Sissy, it’s me. It’s all right.”

Sissy lost her narrow-eyed glare as her eyes went round. “Vanya?” she said, sounding uncertain. Her shotgun dipped down but she didn’t completely lower it. “What are you… Who are those people? Oh, I recognize that boy. He came here, said he was your brother.”

“Yes, he is,” Vanya said, taking a few steps toward Sissy on the porch. “Those people are all my siblings. It’s, well, it’s kind of a long story, but I’ve found my family and gotten my memories back.”

“Oh, Vanya, it’s great,” Sissy said, looking genuinely happy for a moment until the strangeness of the situation hit her again and she gripped her shotgun more tightly. “I saw a blue light and you all just materialized out of thin air. It’s like when you disappeared. What the hell is going on?”

“I’ll explain everything,” Vanya said soothingly. “Can I come inside to talk? My siblings can…”

She turned to her family, meeting Five’s eyes. He shrugged lopsidedly and said, “Leave in an hour.”

“Yeah, we can… enjoy the fresh air and stuff in the meantime,” Klaus said, kicking at a tuff of grass with the tip of his boot.

“As if we hadn’t had enough fresh air in France,” Diego grumbled.

Vanya turned back toward Sissy. “Is that all right with you?”

Sissy hesitated for a few more seconds, then lowered her shotgun. “Okay,” she said, jerking her head toward the house. “Come in.”

Vanya followed her inside, and she’d barely stepped in that she was hit with the weight of Harlan colliding with her. “Hey, Harlan,” she said, resting her hands on top of his head. “I’m sorry I disappeared like that. You must have been so scared.”

He held her tighter, burying his face against her stomach while she stroked his hair, her heart pinched with regret that she had to leave again.

“Let go of her, honey,” Sissy said to her son. “Mommy and Vanya need to talk.”

No amount of gentle coaxing would make Harlan let go of Vanya, who had to awkwardly stomp her way to a kitchen chair with Harlan still attached to her like a barnacle. Only when she sat down did he consent to loosening his hold a little, though he still hung from her shoulder. 

Sissy put away her shotgun and came back, looking over at Vanya and her son with a fond expression tinged with wistfulness. Still, she remained standing and her voice was guarded when she asked, “What happened to you? What happened _right now_?”

“It’s, uh.” Vanya chuckled nervously as she reviewed everything she’d learned about herself since the last time she’d seen Sissy. “I wasn’t lying when I said that this is a long story. I’m not even sure where to start.”

“You can start by who you really are.”

“My siblings and I were all adopted by this billionaire named Reginald Hargreeves. You’ve met Five already.”

“Five? What kind of a name is that?”

“Well, the oddness is only starting here. See, we were all born with these… extraordinary abilities—more like superpowers, you know, the kind you see in comic books—and…”

Vanya talked for a very long time, so long that her voice got hoarse from overuse. She didn’t think she’d ever talked that much in her life before. Harlan got bored at some point and wandered away to his toys, while Sissy listened in intent silence, her hands tucked under her armpits. When Vanya was done, a moment of silence stretched in the kitchen for so long that it rubbed Vanya’s nerves raw.

“Will you say something, please?” she begged. 

“I don’t really know what to say,” Sissy said, shaking her head. “This sounds like crazy talk, really, but… That blue light and you appearing in front of my house—I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“I could ask one of the others to show you their power. Five… no. Five wouldn’t mind making a demonstration, but he really shouldn’t be using his power. Luther could smash something, or Klaus could manifest Ben.”

“No, I don’t need a demonstration.” Sissy took a deep breath and freed her hands from under her arms. “I believe you, Vanya. I want to believe you. Also, I always knew you were special.”

Vanya’s cheeks heated, as much because of the comment itself and how it unknowingly addressed her deepest insecurities as because of how sincere Sissy had sounded. Sissy’s cheeks were a little rosy too; their eyes met briefly and they both looked away at the same time.

“So,” Sissy said after a moment, clearing her throat, “what are you going to do now? Are you—are you leaving with your family? Back to… your own timeline? Have you come to say goodbye?”

Vanya’s throat tightened. “Sissy,” she said, stepping down from the kitchen chair. 

She’d had all the time in the world to think during the months they’d spent in 2002 France. To think about Sissy and the feelings she thought were starting to bloom between them, about whether to ask Sissy if her and Harlan would come to 2019 with them like Allison had asked Ray. As tempting as it was, she had decided against it. She didn’t know what sort of world they were going back to; she couldn’t ask Sissy to leave her husband, her farm, her timeline and then land her and her son in the same sort of destroyed world Five had spent his life in. Even if the world wasn’t destroyed anymore, she couldn’t promise Sissy a peaceful life. The Commission was going through some restructuration since the Handler had died, but it didn’t mean they weren’t a threat anymore. The Hargreeves’ powers would always made them a target anyway, wherever and whenever they went. 

“I wish I could stay,” she said in a pained murmur, walking up to Sissy until they were standing dangerously close from each other, Sissy’s proximity making Vanya’s heart beat faster. “But I don’t belong here. We’re anomalies in 1963. We’ve already done enough damage as it is.”

“It’s all right,” Sissy said, turning her head as though she couldn’t stand to look Vanya in the eye. “You do what you gotta do. It was silly to think that I would get to keep you. I knew deep down that you would go back to your real life one day.”

“Sissy, look at me.” Cupping her cheek with a hand, Vanya made Sissy face her. “The month I spent at the farm with you and Harlan, it was real too, and I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget _you_. I want you to be happy and I think—it really isn’t my place to tell you how to live your life when I’ve messed up mine so badly, but I think you should leave.”

“What? Leave here—leave _Carl_? To go where?”

“Any place where you’ll feel you can breathe again. You told me you were saving money, right? You said it was in case Carl left, but I don’t think that’s true. You’re saving it because _you_ want to leave, but you haven’t been ready to admit it to yourself yet.”

“It would mean more to hear you say this,” Sissy said, her eyes filling with tears, “if you said you would be there too.”

“Where I’m going isn’t somewhere you want to take Harlan and I know he’ll always come first for you. But think about what you want to do once I’m gone. About what you want for yourself and for him.”

“I’m so scared, though,” Sissy whispered. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

“You can,” Vanya said. “You’ve done it already, in some of the time loops my brother explored.” Impulsively, she leaned in and lightly kissed Sissy’s lips. “This is for luck,” she said. 

“Vanya,” Sissy said, blinking. “I—”

“Take care of yourself and Harlan.”

Feeling her eyes start to burn and her throat to seize up, she turned on her heels and left the house before she could burst into tears. 

—-

After Vanya had followed her friend inside the house, the siblings had scattered. Klaus went for the swings, pestering Diego and Luther so they would push him. Five sat down on the porch’s front steps, looking tired, though Allison knew better than to ask him whether he was okay. Having trouble speaking only meant that Five had put that much more work into making his glares more powerful than words. His fierce need for independence, something he was born with and that had been hardened to steel by a lifetime of self-reliance, had clashed uglily for the past few months with the after-effects of his stroke. They all had to learn how to let him do as much as he could by himself while being there to help if necessary, and the learning curve had been steep.

“Walk with me?” Ray said, holding his hand out to Allison.

They went for a walk around the house. At the back of it a windmill spun lazily, moved by the same wind that had the laundry on the drying rack flopping. Colorful flowers were growing in raised beds and Allison stopped to brush a petal. 

“Are you mad at me?” Ray asked.

“Mad? Why would I be mad?” And then, because such a disingenuous answer would make it seem like she _was_ mad, she amended, “I understand why you won’t come with us. Really, it’s probably for the best. I don’t know if I trust those assholes at the Commission not to hunt you down for being out of your original timeline. I’ve exposed you to enough assassins as it is.”

“A thoroughly thoughtful answer,” Ray said with a hint of irony, though not the mean-spirited sort. “Doesn’t mean you’re not mad, though.”

She scowled half-heartedly at him, then snorted when she couldn’t sustain it. “How do you know me so well? I don’t think Patrick ever managed it, and we were married longer.”

“I watch and learn, I guess. So, tell me what’s on your mind. This is our last hour together. I don’t want it to end on a sour note.”

Allison’s heart was stabbed with a harsh pang at those words. One hour. Even having known it was coming for a long time, she couldn’t quite believe that she would have to say goodbye to Ray forever. How did you conclude a whole relationship in an hour? Separating from Patrick had come with bitter arguments and resentment on both sides, and even then she’d known he would remain part of her life in some measure. This wasn’t the case with Ray. They had to let go of each other, not because they’d come to hate each other, but because they belonged in different worlds. 

“All right, maybe I _am_ a little mad,” she admitted, giving him a half-smile. “And I know I shouldn’t, which makes it all the more annoying. I can’t be mad at you for having things that you wouldn’t sacrifice for me, because I do have things I wouldn’t sacrifice for you either.”

“Like your daughter, you mean?” Ray said softly.

“Yeah,” Allison said in an exhale. This was something else she was trying not to obsess too much over, though it wasn’t working so well. “I have no idea what’s going to happen once we’re back to 2019. If the world will be intact, if things will be changed, if Claire will be… I don’t think I would be able to take it if we’d somehow managed to erase her out of existence. And if everything is as well as it can be, will she… I’ve wanted so badly to be a better mother for her, and now I’ve been gone for two years and… Has it been enough? I mean, in recent memory I’ve used my power to kill someone, and I used it on Five in a way that could have killed him—”

“You also protected your siblings with it,” Ray said. “You and Five would be dead without it. Some of the others might have been hurt or killed when you went to rescue Five. You kept us safe in France.”

“True enough.”

Klaus’ delighted scream pealed from the other side of the house, so he must have convinced Luther or Diego—probably Diego, the sucker—to push him on the swing. A gust of warm wind blew Allison’s hair in her face and she had to pull it out of her mouth. She wondered how Vanya’s own farewell conversation was going on inside the house—though Vanya hadn’t quite admitted it, Allison was pretty sure that her sister’s feelings for her friend Sissy weren’t entirely platonic. Well, it would give them something to bond over.

“I thought I had it all figured out when I stopped using it completely. That it was the answer. I just had to pretend I never had that power, that I was a normal person. But I always seem to come back to it, and as you said, it sometimes has consequences that I can’t regret. So I wonder… am I just born bad?”

“I absolutely don’t believe this,” Ray said firmly. “Not just about you but about people in general. I see bad every day, in this city, in this country—if I thought that it was just the way it was, that those people were born bad and nothing I do could ever change it, then what would be the point of what I and others in the movement are doing? I can’t pretend I know what it’s like to have your power—it must be an awful temptation and I can’t swear I would be strong enough to resist it—but maybe it’s not helpful to see it as a bad thing you have to get rid of. The struggle is the point. Want it or not, this is your responsibility. Whether or not to do it, _how_ to do it.”

This was something that their father had hammered in their heads as kids— _responsibility_. It was their responsibility to fight for the world’s safety, whatever the cost to themselves and to others, because they were born different. All of them except Luther and Five had rejected it as they became adults. Hearing it from Ray felt different, less like a cross to bear and more like a path. Less like a weight that would crush her and more like something that would open up in front of her. 

“How did you get so wise?” she said, smiling through her tears.

“Practice?” he said, taking her hand and drawing her to him, flushing their bodies together. 

“What am I going to do without you?” she murmured against his lips. 

“You’ll do just fine. I’m the one who’ll be lost.”

They kissed; it tasted sweet and bitter, just like this goodbye did. 

—-

Holding hands, Ray and Allison made their way back to the front of the house when one hour had passed. Ray’s heart was a stone, heavy in his ribcage. His resolve was weakening. He could tell Allison he’d changed his mind and would travel to the future with her, after all. He was just one man and it wasn’t like the entire movement depended on _him_. There were a lot of brothers and sisters out there fighting for their people’s rights. He’d done enough; he was entitled to being selfish for once. 

“Ray, you all right?” Allison asked.

“Not really, no,” he said in a thick voice. “It’s—it’s hard.”

“Yes,” she said. “It is.”

They found Vanya sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Five on the porch, her eyes rimmed with red. She sniffed and rubbed the back of her hand under her nose, straightening when she saw them coming.

“How did it go?” Allison asked her sister.

“Oh, as well as it could go. She believed me, at least. It’s just, you know.” Vanya shrugged, giving Allison a crooked smile. 

“I know, yes,” Allison said. 

It was the theme of the day. Goodbyes were hard; knowing you had to let go didn’t make it any easier. Ray let out a slow breath, willing the pain in his chest to ease a little.

“We going now?” Five asked his sisters, closely looking at them one after the other.

“Might as well,” Allison said with a sigh. 

Ray looked toward the swings and saw that Klaus, Luther and Diego were making their way back to them. Klaus had found a cowboy hat somewhere and put it on. He chatted animatedly to a long-suffering Diego, but Ray knew him well enough by now to notice the uneasiness in his demeanor. Seeing them coming, Five pulled himself to his feet using the handrail, swatting Vanya’s helping hand away. 

“Hey, Ray, man,” Klaus said, rubbing his hands fussily as he approached Ray. “Can you do me a huge favor?”

“Say no,” Diego said. “Trust me and say no. Save yourself.”

“I can at least hear what he has to say,” Ray said.

“Your funeral, man,” Diego said, shaking his head regretfully. 

“Don’t listen to him,” Klaus said. “It’s not anything _bad_. There’s this young man, Dave—David Katz. He works in a hardware store with his uncle Ryan or Brian or something like that. It’s on Commerce. He’s going to enlist very soon and I would really like for him not to do this because… Well, see, he’s going to die in Vietnam, and I don’t want him to die because I _love_ him—”

“Wait, who’s this guy again?” Luther asked.

“Oh. Is he your boyfriend from Vietnam?” Diego asked, realization dawning on his face. He reached out and squeezed Klaus’ shoulder. “Shit, man.”

“Uh,” Ray said. “I’m not entirely clear on what you want me to do.”

“Convince him not to enlist.”

“How should I do that? I don’t think he’s going to react well to a random black guy telling him what he should or should not do. Or should I mention you?”

“No, no, no, don’t do that,” Klaus said, rapidly waving his hands. “He, uh, doesn’t know me. Time-travel, you know. But you’re a charismatic guy, I’m sure you’ll find… Oh, I know. You could recruit him for the civil rights movement!”

“I don’t know,” Ray said uneasily. “It feels a bit… creepy for me to approach him with an agenda when he doesn’t even know me.”

“You’d be saving his life!” Klaus said, his eyes wide and pleading. “Dave really craves a higher purpose, so instead of throwing his life away for some bullshit patriotic ideal you’ll be giving him an opportunity to do some _real_ good. Try to avoid the uncle, though, he’s an asshole.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Ray said, earning himself a hearty slap on the shoulder. 

“Thank you, man. Best brother-in-law.” Five pointedly cleared his throat and Klaus groaned. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming. Time to face the music, whatever it is.”

“Allison?” Five said, giving Allison a look that was a fraction less impatient than the one he’d given Klaus.

Allison took a long, drawn-out breath. “It’s time,” she agreed. 

She gave Ray a kiss and then let go of his hand. The others told him goodbye too—Klaus and Vanya hugged him, Diego clapped his back, Luther shook his hand and Five gave him a terse nod. The Hargreeves gathered in a circle, like they all had when they’d left France. Five had the briefcase in his hands while Allison held his right shoulder and Diego his left one. A few long expectant seconds passed, everyone waiting for Five to activate the briefcase. No flash of blue light happened and Ray released the breath he’d been holding.

“Five?” Luther asked. “What’s going on?”

“Ben here?” Five asked, keeping his eyes on the briefcase.

“Yeah, he’s here,” Klaus said. “Holding onto my shoulder like the last time. Don’t worry about it.”

Five made a humming sound but still didn’t activate the briefcase. The siblings shared looks over his bowed head. 

“Is something wrong?” Allison asked. 

“We—” Five’s face contorted with frustration. “We—have to be ready for anything,” he said in the slow, careful delivery that meant he was giving his entire focus to the act of speaking. “We don’t know what awaits us. So don’t let go.”

“It should be less chaotic this time, no?” Klaus said. “I mean, no offense to you, Five, but last time was a bit of a bumpy ride.”

“We’ll hold on better this time,” Allison said. “Right, guys?”

“Of course,” Luther said. “We’ll stick together no matter what.”

“Contrary to last time, I’m awake,” Vanya said. “So I’ll make sure to hold on.”

“I had no issue holding on last time,” Diego said. “It’s all of you guys who let go.”

“Whatever it is, we’ll face it together,” Allison said, clutching Five’s shoulder harder. “We’re stronger together. We literally are—you all saw what we did when we were rescuing Five, things we’d never been able to do before. It has to mean something. So you don’t have to worry about it, Five.”

“Aww,” Klaus said. “Is Five getting sentimental? Are you worried about us, old man?”

“You all are—” Five said, a muscle in his cheek twitching, “—a bunch of stumbling puppies. Can’t help but be worried.”

“Aw, he loves us! Under this hardened shell, beats a—"

“Ready to go now,” Five interrupted him. “One, two—"

Five snapped the clasps of the briefcase open and it started to whine. Allison sent one last look in Ray’s direction, mouthing, ‘I love you,’ before they were all washed over by a blue twirl. Ray closed his eyes to avoid getting blinded. When he opened them again, the Hargreeves were gone as though they’d never been here at all. Their absence made the quiet surrounding the farm feel deafening. A tear rolled down Ray’s cheek as he blinked. 

The porch’s floorboards creaked behind him with footseps. Ray turned around and saw Vanya’s friend Sissy, hugging herself, her pale eyes searching the front of the house. “Are they gone?” she asked.

“Yes,” Ray said. “I’m sorry to be intruding. I’m Raymond Chestnut. I am—was or am, I don’t know—Allison’s husband. Vanya’s sister’s husband.”

“Oh,” Sissy said, and beyond the awkwardness of them not knowing each other, he thought he could detect sympathy in her expression. They were strangers and their lives were probably as different as could be, but they did have one thing in common. “I’m sorry. Here I am, feeling crushed over a woman I’ve known for a month, when you just had to let your wife go.”

“It’s all right,” Ray said. “There’s no rule saying we can’t both be sad.”

She gave him a fragile smile. “Do you think they’ll be all right? Vanya’s story was… a lot to take in, frankly, and I think that she left some things out, but from what I gathered they’re not sure of what they’re going to find in 2019.”

“They’ll be fine,” Ray said. “They have each other.”

They both looked again at the spot where the Hargreeves had stood. “Do you need a ride back home?” Sissy said after a moment of silent contemplation. “Unless someone is coming to pick you up…”

“Oh, right.” None of them had thought about this, not even him. “I’m really sorry to trouble you with this.”

“It’s nothing. But come in for a drink first. I don’t really want to be alone right now.”

“Neither do I.”

“It’s strange, it’s like… Like none of the past month was real, if you see what I mean? Like I’ve just woken up from a strange, wonderful dream and now I have to go back to my life, but I… I’m also not the same person anymore.”

“I see exactly what you mean.” 

He didn’t look forward to going back home and seeing traces of Allison’s presence all over the house, but when Allison had offered him to wipe his memories, it had horrified him more than the idea of missing her had. Of course he would miss her, and miss the rest of the Hargreeves too, after the three months they’d spent together. They’d torn through his life like a whirlwind, first Five, then the others, and they had left it as suddenly and devastatingly. He would always wonder how they were doing back in their own timeline, how much havoc they’d managed to wreck together, whether they’d succeeded in saving the world. He trusted that they could do it, but they needed to realize it too. He didn’t want to forget the strange and wondrous world they’d given him a glimpse of. 

“Do you have a phone book?” he asked Sissy as he followed her inside her house. “I need to look up someone named David Katz.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap! We're leaving the Hargreeves off to new adventures, who knows what weird mess they'll be getting themselves into next. I imagine some of you might be disappointed that Ray and Sissy were left behind, but as much as I like Allison/Ray and Vanya/Sissy, I thought that Ray and Sissy's reasons for not going to 2019 in the show made sense, and not enough had changed in the fic to justify a different decision. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who read, kudo'd and commented! I hope you enjoyed this epilogue. :)


End file.
